


The Red Wedding

by Edhla



Series: After the Fall [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 48,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8838010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: Elizabeth Hayden is stabbed on her wedding night, alone in a locked room, with a knife that can't be found. Good thing Lestrade has Sherlock and John on hand to solve the mystery, because he has other things on his mind. The vicious snowstorm stranding them all in a remote Yorkshire manor house is one of them. Sherlock's using again, and that's another. And nobody is enjoying the bout of food poisoning that's broken out...





	1. Wholly Matrimony

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU, the eleventh fic in a series starting just after The Reichenbach Fall with 'After the Fall'. Everyone's as in character as possible, but some pairings are different from the current seasons 3 and 4. Please, by all means, do give this one a chance... faves, follows, reviews, abusive PMs, etc,. all welcome ;)

When she was having a screaming meltdown, tiny Charlie Watson seemed to weigh about four tonnes and have at least ten arms and legs.

It was Greg and Melissa's wedding cake that had set her off this time. One look at the purple sugar pansies festooned over all three of its tiers, and Charlie had decided she wanted them. All of them. _Right now_. The fact that the cake wasn't hers and hadn't even been cut yet didn't matter, and the promise of cake later doesn't mean much when you're seventeen months old. Consequently, John had hauled her out of the reception hall, kicking and screeching the whole way, to calm her down. Though, he thought to himself, expecting her to calm down any time this year might be asking too much. A full five minutes after he'd closed the hall door behind them with one shoulder, she was still howling.

"Hey," he said, struggling to keep a hold on her as she fought him with all her strength, scratching at his arms and kicking her heels back into his thighs. "We've been through this, Charlotte. Nobody wants to be around you when you put on your banshee act. Including me."

Judging from Charlie's reaction, even she didn't want to be around herself at moments like these. John, beginning to feel desperate, looked around for something to distract her with. But her backpack of toys, bottles and other paraphernalia was back in the hall tucked behind Molly's chair at the head table, and there didn't seem to be much else on hand out here: plush carpet, a tattered-looking Louis XV chair in silver and gold brocade, and an oak sideboard underneath a wide, low window, adorned only with a vase of red and white roses. Nor was there any chance of ducking home to get something to entertain her with. For reasons best known to herself, Melissa had decided she wanted her wedding at Arndale Hall, a sixteenth-century mansion located squarely in the middle of the North York Moors National Park. The wedding gathering was very small—some thirty guests in all. Almost everyone had arrived at Arndale late in the previous afternoon, stayed the night at the Hall, and weren't due to travel home until the following day. It was New Year's Eve, and nobody particularly wanted to be on the roads.

"Please stop," John muttered to his daughter. Reasoning that roses in December had to be fake ones, he pulled one out of the nearby vase, confirmed the plastic stem had no thorns, and tried to hand it to her. "Here, Charlie, have a flower…"

Charlie grabbed the rose stem, then threw it so far that it bounced off the chair and onto the floor.

"Okay. Fine, don't play with the flower." John jiggled her in his arms, wondering if it was worth letting her play with his expensive watch just for a bit of peace and quiet. But before he could decide, the double-doors to the reception hall creaked open. He looked up to see Greg Lestrade come out, furtively carrying what John assumed to be a tissue bunched in one hand.

"I thought you were-" The rest of John's question was swamped by Charlie's wailing.

"Cutting the cake, yeah; we just did it," Greg said easily.

"Sorry I had to miss it."

"You didn't miss much—never understood why people have to stand around and watch the cake-cutting, actually. Anyway, there's plenty left… hey, Charlie, cheer up—it might never happen, kid. Got this for you."

Before John could stop him, he handed Charlie the half-piece of wedding cake he'd been holding. She looked at it and then up at him with huge brown eyes that were still overbrimming with tears, then grabbed it in one chubby fist and smooshed it into—though mainly _onto_ —her mouth. The inevitable compromise was instant silence.

"That's the way, all over your dad's best suit," Greg chuckled, as chunks of marzipan landed on John's lapel.

John picked up the largest piece of icing and put it in his mouth, then brushed the remaining cake crumbs onto the carpet. "Stop spoiling her," he protested mildly. "You can't just give her something nice every time she looks like she's about to cry."

"Course I can," Greg replied. "She's not mine, so I get to fill her with sugar, hype her up, and give her back. That's the way these things work."

"You, Sherlock and Harry are just as bad as one another, you know that?" _And let's not even start on Mycroft making Molly and me look bad by buying Charlie Christmas presents that cost more than our car._

"Good to hear we're all doing our jobs properly," Greg said, unperturbed. "Especially since the workload's about to triple and Charlie's about to turn into a green-eyed monster. How long to go now before the twins come along?"

"Eight weeks tomorrow, on the calendar," John said. "I was a bit worried it was going to be Christmas night. She kicked Molly."

Greg winced. "Kids always have to spoil a good day like that."

"Yeah, bit like now." John forced himself to brush off the nagging memory of that particular occasion—the look on Molly's face when he'd scooped Charlie up after she'd kicked her and then thrown herself onto the kitchen floor to scream. Molly hadn't said anything, but the look in her eyes had: _Please don't hit her._

He wasn't _going_ to hit her. And he didn't know how he felt about Molly assuming he was.

"How's Sherlock coping in there?" Since Sherlock was Greg's groomsman and John wasn't, he'd been temporarily marooned at the far end of the wedding table, an arrangement that had only lasted until everyone had eaten and got up to hop tables among themselves. Still, working a room full of half-drunk wedding guests had never been Sherlock's natural milieu, and he'd been curiously quiet throughout most of the proceedings so far.

Greg smiled. "He's fine. Hardest job was getting him up there in the first place, but last I saw, Molly and Liz have him well in hand." Liz Brennan, Greg's new mother-in-law, was the Mistress of Boarders at King's Ely, a staunch second-wave feminist, and an expert in Medievalism. She was also almost eleven months younger than himself, though he wasn't fond of remembering this. But one thing she _wasn_ 't was shy, and had readily agreed to become, at least for one weekend, Sherlock's new best friend.

"Ah, with a bit of luck, someone will be murdered, in the billiard room, with the lead pipe, and we'll have a crime to solve," John said.

"Speak for yourself," Greg said, grinning. "Of all the things I plan to be doing tonight, I promise you, solving a crime won't be one of them."

These sort of knowing moments were rare and far-between with John and Greg, since Sherlock was usually around to huff and complain at any indication that either of his friends had an active sex life. John laughed.

"Well, congratulations, anyway," he said, slapping Greg's shoulder with sudden warmth. "She's perfect. And it's been a long time since you've had something..." He stopped himself, having been about to say, _it's been a long time since you've had something nice happen to you._ "Anyway," he said, after an embarrassed pause, "so what are you doing out here?"

"Well…" Greg's hand twitched toward his jacket pocket. "I was _going_ to sneak out for a quick smoke while Mel and Hayley are distracted. But having a look outside, I think I'll pass."

John had so far been paying attention to Charlie's tantrum and not the view out the window. It had been snowing when most of the guests had arrived at Arndale Hall early the evening before, and he had an idea that it had been snowing as they'd prepared for the ceremony that morning. But there was a big difference between a layer of white powder and the complete white-out that he could see out the window now. It was fully dark already, and drifts of hard snow were already creeping up to the low bay windows.

"Oh, God," John said, actually taking a step back.

"More snow than you'll ever see in London," Greg said wryly. "Good thing we don't leave for our honeymoon until Thursday."

"Yeah, I don't think anybody will be setting foot out of doors tonight, put it that way." John hoisted Charlie, who was still hiccuping over her cake, up on his hip. "Anyway," he said, "will you mind her for a couple of minutes? I'm not taking her into the men's room with me." He promptly handed Charlie over to Greg, feeling secretly gratified when the mushy remains of her piece of cake landed on his jacket. "Where am I going, anyway?"

Greg, handing the soggy cake back to Charlie, nodded in the right direction. "Down the hall, past the other reception doors, to your right," he said.

"Thanks. I'll be back."

* * *

Over the morning, John had become dimly aware that the Lestrade-Brennan wedding wasn't the only one happening at Arndale Hall that New Year's Eve. At first he assumed the event going on in the larger reception hall next door was a standard New Year's Eve party, but the strangers wandering around the corridors in wedding suits had put to rest that idea. As he walked past the doors to the other hall in search of the bathrooms, he could hear the usual sounds of merriment: clinking glass, laughter, the occasional screams of playing children.

While most of Arndale Hall was made up to be as antiquated as possible—with appropriate mod cons, of course—John was taken aback to find the men's bathroom more fitting in style to a Soho nightclub than a heritage building. In particular, there were no actual sinks, the taps running straight down into recesses in the floor. He figured out how to run them eventually and was drying his hands with a paper towel when, from close outside the door, a shrill feminine voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"What on earth made you think this is acceptable? We could all die!"

He paused, the wad of mushy towel still in his hands. The male voice who responded was muffled, and he couldn't make any clear words out. But he had no trouble making out the reply.

"Yes, it IS! My husband and I paid _eighty pounds a head_ for you to serve our guests _raw chicken!"_

Alarm bells. John had also had some sort of chicken and pesto combination half an hour before. So had at least ten other wedding guests, including Melissa, Sherlock and Molly. John had thought the chicken tasted fine. Better than fine. Certainly nowhere near _raw_. But salmonella was unpredictable, and you never knew when you were about to be snowed in with twelve cases of it to deal with. And if Molly… well, that didn't bear thinking about at the moment, but the least he could do was get a better idea of exactly what was going on out there. He opened the door slightly, edging next to the sink so he was at an angle to see the woman speaking in the corridor outside.

She was none other than the bride herself, and her beauty literally made John gape. She was tall and pale, with curled chestnut hair cascading from under her wedding veil and tiara and over her bare shoulders. High cheekbones, huge grey eyes, and a decolletage that could have been carved out of marble. Melissa's wedding dress was a simple concoction of cream French lace and silk; the stranger's dress was a strapless ivory sheath, positively blinding onlookers with the amount of diamentes on the bodice and trailing a good two feet along the floor behind her. John didn't particularly care what was in her bouquet and wouldn't have been able to tell if he did, because she was just then waving it around so violently that he half-expected her to start hitting the man in front of her with it. By striking contrast, he was swarthy, middle-aged and a good three inches shorter than her. Judging by his dark, utilitarian smock and hairnet, he was the chef in charge of the kitchen.

"Madam," he tried, lacing his fingers together anxiously. "I can personally vouch for the quality of your guest's meals. Our chefs are—"

"It was _raw!"_

"Yes, you've said; but, Madam, if you could please show me—"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"No," he said, though John knew he was using all of his energy to prevent himself from reaching out and strangling her. "No, madam, but if the chicken was inedible, then surely—"

"I will sue you." She brought down her bouquet like a hatchet, but although the man cringed, it seemed to be a glancing blow. "Do you understand? I will _sue you,_ and it won't just be to recoup the ridiculous cost of this reception, which, by the way, was middling to average _before_ that revolting main course…"

 _Wow. I'd love to meet the man who willingly married her._ But immediately, John shook himself. All this was none of his business, aside from a possible impending food poisoning outbreak, and if he left Charlie with Greg any longer he'd give her more sugar, or maybe even a puppy this time. Trying his best to act as if he hadn't been eavesdropping, he pushed the bathroom door open with both hands and made his way back down the hall, not looking at either the bride or the chef as he passed them. All he registered was a vague glimpse of ivory tulle dress and a snatch of her shrill voice: _The thing that makes me really angry is, you've ruined the most important day of my life, a day I'll never, ever get back again. And you don't even care! I'm reporting you to the Food Standards Agency on Monday…_

It was not the last time Dr. John Watson saw Elizabeth Hayden, but it was the last time he saw her alive.


	2. Remember You Must Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so SO much for your support. It blows my mind that there are people who've been with me on this AU journey for three years and eleven fics, even after canon stomped a mudhole in it. You are all amazing. 
> 
> As with most of my fics, this is at least loosely based on a real case. On March 9, 1929, a Polish laundryman named Isidor Fink was shot in New York City. The gun was never found. The door of the room he was shot in was locked from the inside, and the only other access to the room was through a transom window so tiny that first responders had to help a young child clamber through it to let them in. As far as I'm aware, how it was done (whether murder or suicide) has never been explained, though my solution to this case is one of the theories proposed for Fink.
> 
> As always, faves, follows, reviews, abusive PMs, etc. are all incredibly welcome. All writers like to know their work is being read :)

For all that Lestrade had acquiesced to Melissa's wanting a "proper wedding" with most of the accompanying traditions, one thing he'd categorically refused was any kind of wedding waltz. Melissa had let that part of tradition slide, since it was virtually the only thing he'd put his foot down about, and she had no desire to humiliate him or cause an argument on their wedding day. She'd spent most of the evening sitting calmly at the wedding table, her gauzy lace skirt arranged around her ankles; once or twice she'd taken off her Christian Louboutin shoes and gone onto the dancefloor with Hayley.

"She looks lovely," she remarked, watching Hayley and Jake nestled together in one corner like a pair of doves. "Did you have a talk with Jake?"

Greg cleared his throat. "Might have had a word with him."

"On a scale of one to dead, how terrified is he of you now?"

"Oh, a good eight, at least," Greg said playfully.

" _Gregory Peter Lestrade._ What did you say?"

"Calm down, _Melissa Kate Lestrade,_ I didn't come down on him like a tonne of bricks. I just pointed out that it's easy to get carried away when you're at a wedding and your girlfriend's all dressed up as one of the bridesmaids, but if he proposed to her tonight, she'd probably accept and they'd both regret it. I told him to wait five years."

"Five?"

"I figure that should hold him off for at least two."

Melissa smiled. It was the world's worst-kept secret that Jake wanted to settle down, and Hayley, though barely nineteen, wasn't quite against the idea. Melissa gave them twelve months, at the most, to be properly engaged and two years to be properly married. Since the last thing she wanted was to have an argument with her husband of only four hours about her new stepdaughter, she looked around for something to change the subject with, finding it immediately in Sherlock, still sitting on the far end of the wedding table. John had been talking to him earlier, and the chair he'd pulled up was still sitting there at right-angles to the table. But looking around, Melissa spotted John at the far end of the room, Charlie asleep on one shoulder, Molly asleep, or close enough to it, against the other. Not a moment where he would welcome being required to get up. Melissa nudged Greg and indicated to where Sherlock sat.

"Sherlock looks like he's at a funeral," she said.

"What, that? That's his happy face."

Melissa punched his arm. "Bastard," she muttered good-naturedly. She looked around for her mother to intervene, as she already had twice that night when Sherlock had zoned out, but Liz and another of Melissa's friends, Kim, were deep in conversation at the other end of the wedding table. Greg's sisters and mother were grouped together at one of the near tables on their left; none of them liked Sherlock much. Greg's nieces, Jessica and Brooke, were nowhere to be seen, and neither were their respective partners—Melissa still wasn't sure who belonged to whom, only that one of them had been surly and the other a nice guy who would probably get along with Sherlock, if she could find him. Sally Donovan, resplendent in a crimson dress and gold shoes, was slow-dancing with her husband in one corner. And anyway, she was the last person you'd send over to cheer up Sherlock Holmes.

Melissa stood up, bunching her skirt awkwardly in her hands. "You won't get jealous if I ask Sherlock to dance with me?" she asked. "I bet he can. One of those things you learn at Hogwarts, or wherever it was he went to school."

Greg smiled up at her as she pulled her chair out and edged past him. "Ask away," he said. "I don't like your chances much, though."

"Challenge accepted." Free from the entanglements of the tablecloth, Melissa stepped neatly out of her shoes and padded over to where Sherlock was apparently still lost in thought. She reached out and cuffed him lightly over the ear.

"Hey," she said. "Having a good time?"

Caught off-guard, Sherlock took just a little too long to answer. "Well, I…"

She grabbed his hand and started pulling him to his feet. "Come on."

"What are you…?"

"Dance."

"Melissa-"

"Come on; this one's a waltz." The jukebox in the corner had just started playing Billy Joel's 'Always a Woman'. "I bet you can waltz. And Greg just bet me a twenty that you weren't going to dance with me because you don't know how."

Thanks to a childhood with the aggressively competitive Mycroft, Sherlock was always up to disprove a bet, and Melissa knew it. She watched his jaw harden. "Oh, really?" he said.

"Yes, really." Melissa lied better than some of the criminal sociopaths she worked with. "Help me make a bit of money off the old man, will you?"

Sherlock rose, and Melissa let him lead her onto the dancefloor. As both she and Greg had suspected all along, Sherlock danced easily and well, with a firm and practiced step, though he was clearly concentrating more on looking good than feeling good. Still, by the time the song finished Melissa was laughing, and even Sherlock had broken into an unaccustomed smile.

"Again," she said, pulling at his arm as another song started. But Sherlock, still smiling, held his hands up.

"No, no," he said good-naturedly. "I helped you win a bet, my obligations are ended. Besides, I…" He made a hesitant gesture against his mouth with two fingers.

Melissa groaned, gesturing in despair at Sherlock's retreating back. "Bloody smokers!"

* * *

 

If John had been any closer by, and not desperately trying not to wake the sleeping toddler in his arms, he could have told Melissa one interesting fact: Sherlock hadn't had a cigarette in over a month, not since breaking the case of the abandoned _Marie Celeste._ And if Melissa had been a fly on the wall in the fluorescent-lit fire stairs, she would have seen Sherlock sit down on one of them and rough his hair up in his hands, let out a breath; but she would not have seen him light a cigarette. The fire stairs were, technically, still indoors. A glance had told him that the door to them was no longer alarmed, no matter what the sign on it said, but even if he'd been tempted to light up, it would have set off the fire alarms and probably the sprinkler system as well.

Sherlock's hand twitched into the inside pocket of his jacket, as if it were a moment he'd been preparing for all day—and in some secret way, he had. When he drew it out again, he held a clear plastic baggie between two fingers, and in it was a gram of cocaine.

Guaranteed not to set off any fire alarms.

This wasn't the way Sherlock preferred his synthetic high; he found snorting unpleasant, and it produced a weaker high that took longer to arrive and was quicker to fade. But after he'd promised John—absolutely promised him—that he'd never 'do drugs' while Charlie was living at Baker Street, he'd made a sort of odd compromise with himself. Okay, so he was snorting cocaine. At least he wasn't injecting it.

And really, Sherlock thought, he'd done a reasonable job of keeping to his promises. He'd given in only six times in the five months since John and Molly had been forced to move out of their own home and into 221a. Four times during a low so bad he was sure he couldn't set a foot out of bed without artificial help—he'd once pulled what he needed out of his bedside drawer and drawn out a line before he'd even sat up one morning. Another moment of weakness had happened just before he and John had left for Greg's stag night the weekend before Christmas—there were other people there. _Normal people_ Greg was friends with, people he had to pretend to be normal with and not say anything embarrassing in front of. It was exactly the reason for his fifth time, at half-past eleven that morning, shortly before the ceremony. And then there was now. It took him under a minute to trace out a line on the back of his driver's license and roll up a ten-pound note, and under ten seconds to make it disappear.

When he staggered back up the stairs and opened the fire door into the hall again, he promptly collided with a woman in a sparkling ivory wedding gown.

"Oh, sorry!" he exclaimed automatically, reaching out a hand to stop her from falling.

"Watch where you're going, idiot-!" She pulled up short and fell silent, blatantly staring at him. Not up at him—a tall woman, almost at eye level with himself. Middle class, rather beautiful, and from New Zealand, though she was trying to cover her accent in standard RP and had obviously been in the country some years now. Back from an excursion to the women's toilets, if the slight disarray of her skirt and train was anything to go by; what had happened in the toilets, or anywhere else, to have made her so angry was anyone's guess. Her face would have been startlingly beautiful, if it wasn't for her scowl.

"You," she said ungraciously. "Oh, God. You're the detective. Sherlock Holmes."

For all that he'd garnered so much media attention five years before, very rarely did strangers immediately recognise Sherlock. Or at least, they rarely admitted to it. He blinked.

"Yes," he said.

"Wait there," she said, pushing the air down with her hands. "Will you wait there for me?"

"Do you have—" But before Sherlock could get further, the woman had gone back into the larger reception hall and shut the door behind her.

He waited, leaning with one hand against the wall as his high finally showed up. _This is fine,_ he thought. _I'm fine. I could look after Charlie, on my own, right this minute. Anyhow, it's New Year's Eve. The Archbishop of bloody Canterbury is probably getting coked up tonight._

It seemed like only thirty seconds before the woman came back, though logically Sherlock knew it had to be longer. She handed him a small white card, about the size of a bouquet label or a business card. Blank—no, not blank. He turned it over. In blue ballpoint pen was written:

_Memento Mori_

"You're more educated than you look, at first glance," he remarked, turning it over again. Nothing on the other side this time, either.

She blinked. "I'm sorry?"

" _Memento Mori._ A Latin phrase, sometimes translated as 'Remember you must die.' So you're either acquainted with Latin or with medieval burial practices, or both." He put the card to his face, sniffed it deeply, gave it a hesitant lick and then handed it back to her. "Or, who knows, perhaps you just read Muriel Spark recently. Why bring this to me?"

"You're actually asking me why I'm bringing a death threat to a detective?" she snapped. "This was left in my bouquet this morning, Mr. Holmes. My _bouquet_. Someone here at my wedding has it in for me, and I need to find out now. So you need to find out who wrote this."

"I know who wrote this," he said.

"… You do…?"

"Yes. You did. For God's sake," he said. "If you came to me with a case, you must know of my reputation, so don't try to test me with a fool's game. This was written by you, no more than five minutes ago. The ink smudged when I put my finger on it, and can't you smell it? No smell or taste of pollen on it, though. It's never been anywhere near your bouquet, unless you've decided to economise on your wedding by using fake ones. Unlikely." In reality, Sherlock couldn't smell a scribble of new ink while he was stone-cold sober, but the smudge deduction had been solid, so there was no harm in embellishing it to impress a client. He pointed to the woman's hand. "There's a smudge of blue ink on the third finger of your left hand, which, along with the slope of the handwriting, confirms you're left-handed," he said. "Moreover, there's a compression point near the nail of that third finger where you've been holding a pen recently—very recently—barely put it down to bring this to me, in fact. But no matter, that's not interesting. This is: why?"

"What?"

"It's your wedding day," Sherlock pointed out. "One would assume you'd spend it with your new husband and wedding guests. Instead, you've held me up in the corridor to give me a vaguely threatening note that you wrote to yourself. What is it that you really want from me?'

She gave him what could be categorised as a death glare, but he looked back at her, unperturbed, and waited.

"Someone really is trying to kill me," she finally said, letting out a breath and dropping her gaze.

"Who?"

"I was rather hoping you'd be able to tell me," she said. "All right, so I wrote that note. I thought I needed something other than my say-so to bring to you for you to take me seriously, and the real one I panicked and threw out when I found it this morning."

"Not in your bouquet."

"No, slipped under the door of our room. My husband and I came down yesterday and spent last night here, with twenty of our guests. Sorry-" She finally held out her hand to shake, though it seemed to pain her to do so. "Elizabeth Ross- sorry, no. Elizabeth Hayden. I was Elizabeth Ross this morning; can't get used to the new name all of a sudden." She was speaking so quickly now that Sherlock would have had trouble keeping up with her at a time less synthetically procured. Antipodean accent much more prominent than before. "And that was the fourth note I've got, by the way," she said. "The fourth I've got in a month. Before you ask, the fifth, the twelfth, the twentieth; in my letterbox, on the windshield of my car, tucked under a flower pot on the kitchen windowsill. White blank cards. _Memento Mori_ on all of them. No particular ink—the one I got on the car was black, I think the others have all been blue. No, I don't recognise the handwriting. I-"

She cut herself off abruptly as the reception doors swung open again, letting out a blast of the B-52's _Love Shack_ and a florid, ginger-haired young man in a curiously mismatched outfit: tuxedo above the waist, kilt below it. Seeing Sherlock, he gave a double take.

"Oh, hullo," he said cheerfully, more than halfway to drunk. "I'm Stewart Hayden. Pleased to meet you." He reached out one hand to shake Sherlock's, nodded in recognition when Sherlock muttered his name. But this over and done with, he didn't seem particularly interested in the detective, nor did he stop to wonder what his bride was doing consulting with one on her wedding day. "Darling," he said, turning to her and lowering his voice, though not so low that Sherlock couldn't hear. "Azad just popped in for a word. He said—"

"Sorry," she said brittly. "Who is Azad?"

"Azad Bayar; you know, the man who runs the place?"

Elizabeth looked profoundly disinterested. "Oh," she said. "More about that horrible dinner, then?"

Stewart shook his head. "It's the storm," he said. "He's just heard they've blocked off all the roads in and out of the park. Which means none of the guests can go back to Northallerton tonight."

She stared. "So what are they going to do?"

"He and the rest of the staff are getting all the bedding they can," he said. "They suggested the children and some of the younger people set up camp in the hall."

"What?!" she screeched at him. "Are you serious, Stewart? This is my wedding reception, not a bloody refugee camp!"

"Darling," Stewart tried patiently. "This isn't ideal for anybody, but nobody's allowed to leave. And they have nowhere to go, even if they were. We can't put seventy-five guests out in a snowstorm."

"And I suppose they're going to charge us for this?"

"Of course not, darling." Stewart opened the reception doors again and gestured for her to go through. She did so, without so much as a glance at Sherlock, let alone a farewell. Stewart gave Sherlock a wry look over her retreating shoulder and a furtive wave, though he was still trying to appease his bride. "They're not going to ask us to pay extra because of Mother Nature," he continued as the doors swung shut behind them. "Let's go and ask your mum if…"

Sherlock barely noticed their leaving. He was thinking in reams.

Fifth-twelfth-twentieth-letterbox-car-windowsill-rememberyoumustdie-

Before he could deduce anything further, the swinging doors to the Lestrade-Brennan reception down the hall opened and John, after a quick look around, spotted him. "Hey, I was wondering where you'd got to," he said cheerfully, making his way over. "Come on. Ten minutes 'til midnight."

At the time Sherlock Holmes spoke his parting words with Elizabeth Hayden, she had three hours and, roughly, seventeen minutes to live.


	3. Into Night

It took a long time for the aftermath of midnight to settle down, at least among Greg and Melissa's wedding guests. A tipsy squabble broke out between Greg's nieces over the jukebox. Sally bet Dyer she could drink a pint of lager in one go and almost succeeded. At half-past, it suddenly occurred to Greg that Matthew, still barely sixteen and a half years old, was looking rather… merry. He made his way over to where his son stood talking with Hayley and Jake, two of the few wedding guests he felt comfortable with.

"I'll have that, thanks," he said casually, taking the glass of Coke out of Matthew's hands and sipping it. He winced. "Okay. Could I have a word with you in private, Matthew?"

Matthew obediently followed his father over to the dark recesses of one corner, wearing his best hang-dog expression. But before he could launch into any prepared excuses, Greg spoke first.

"Listen," he said. "I'm not going to punish you over this for three reasons: One, cause I'm having a good time, and I want to continue having a good time. Two, cause you're having a good time, and I want you to continue having a good time. And thirdly, because anyone who drinks bourbon that tastes like drain cleaner doesn't know any better, so I know you're not making a habit of it. Or haven't, yet."

Matthew looked at the floor.

"I know, kid," he said, immediately reproaching himself for tacking on the epithet. "You're the youngest here and the only one underage, apart from Charlie, and she doesn't count." Technically, Matthew's invitation had always been a plus-one, but since Celeste Biondi's murder the previous August, Matthew had shown no signs of interest in another romantic relationship, and he seemed to have few friends. Another reason why his father had no intention of punishing him for taking advantage of the open bar.

"Dad, do you realise how boring people are when they're drunk and you're not?"

Greg opened his mouth to point out that Molly, at least, wasn't drunk; but catching sight of her through the crowd, he stopped. The poor woman looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and hibernate until she gave birth. She wasn't likely to be a great conversationalist right now, even on the subjects of pathology or crime forensics; and the last thing she needed was an awkward conversation with someone who didn't always take non-verbal cues and often asked tactless questions. John had been sitting by her, last he'd seen, but was now on the other side of the room, Charlie asleep against his shoulder, talking to Sherlock. Sherlock seemed more animated than Greg had seen him in ages; but while he wasn't a teetotaller, Sherlock Holmes didn't drink recreationally. Depressants like alcohol interfered with his intellectual processes.

"Sherlock's not drunk," Greg pointed out, though a certain suspicion as to Sherlock's manner was just taking root in his subconscious. After all, less than an hour before, Melissa had told him Sherlock looked like he was at a funeral... "Go talk to him. Grill him for info about your next book or something."

Matthew flushed, but before he could respond, the doors at the end of the hall opened. The man Greg instantly recognised as Azad Bayar, the owner and proprietor of Arndale Hall, looked through the crowd; when his gaze landed on Greg, he went over to him.

"Hi," Greg said cheerfully. "We're being too loud, right?"

Azad shook his head. "It's about the weather," he said. "Is there somewhere we can talk for a moment in private?"

* * *

Molly sneaked another glance at her watch. Just gone twelve-thirty. Surely, now that the countdown and streamers and general fun had been had to usher in the new year, it was okay for people to start leaving?

A nagging reproach tugged at her: she had it in her head, largely as a result of being brought up by a man of joyful hospitality, that it was the height of rudeness to be the first guest to leave a social occasion. And even if it wasn't (it having occurred to her that _somebody_ had to leave first), it was probably the height of rudeness to leave a wedding first when you were part of the bridal party. She plucked at her champagne-pink bridesmaid's dress uncomfortably. A beautiful dress in itself, it looked good on, well, _Hayley_ , who had the right tints of blonde hair to make it work for her, and who wasn't roughly the size of a walrus. Looking around for John, she spotted him standing near the eastern side of the hall, having a conversation with Sherlock. Charlie was still fast asleep against his shoulder. After a few seconds he caught her eye and, saying something to Sherlock, started to make his way through the crowd to her. Molly struggled out of her seat in some relief. She'd spent the past hour trying to decide which was more painful on her lower back: standing, or sitting on what must have been the world's least ergonomic dining chairs.

"Ready to turn in?" John asked her, somewhat hopefully. She nodded, and he reached out and squeezed her shoulder in sympathy. She pushed in her chair and, seeing Greg was in attentive conversation with the man she understood owned the place, she led the way over to where Melissa instead.

"Goodnight," she said, giving Melissa an awkward hug, all thin wrists and elbows, and a peck on the cheek.

"Oh, you're leaving already?"

"Just to bed," Molly said, smiling. "I'm so sorry. I can't keep my eyes open much longer."

Melissa frowned, exchanging a glance with John. "You okay, Moll?"

"Yes… yes, I'm just really tired," she said. "It's been such a long day…"

She trailed off as Greg made his way over, barely giving his guests a polite greeting before asking to speak to his new bride in private. He took Melissa over to the corner where he'd earlier been lecturing Matthew, and the two had a grave consultation for a couple of minutes. Finally they went back to the wedding table, and Greg clambered up to stand on his chair and clapped his hands to get everyone's attention, a method Donovan and Dyer had seen him use in the Incident Room.

"This is not an official wedding speech, so don't get excited," he said over the chorus of playful booing that ensued. "Hey, listen… yeah, I just need your attention for two minutes, that's all."

When everyone had died down to a dull roar, he continued. "So as you might've seen if you've looked out the windows in the last few hours, there's a snowstorm going on out there, and we've just heard they've closed all the roads in and out of the National Park. There's another wedding going on next door, and most of their guests were supposed to travel home tonight, but now they're stranded here. There's not enough accommodation for everyone, so some of them are being put up to sleep in the hall next door. So, look, taking volunteers for people to extend use of their room facilities to the stranded—mainly showers for tomorrow morning."

Some low-level groaning from some of the younger and more inebriated guests.

"Yeah, I know," Greg said. "It's not ideal for anyone, but there you go. On the upside, I've just been told that the bar downstairs will be open all night for the use of both wedding parties, beer and wine on the house, buy your own spirits from the bar, poker and snooker going for anyone who's interested. Thanks, guys."

"Yeah, I think we'll pass on all that," John said in Molly's ear. "It's not going to end well, when everyone's so pissed up as it is. Let's go."

* * *

By the time John had helped her take about fifty pins out of her hair and free her from her dress, Molly was so tired she had little recollection of getting into her nightie and into bed. John put Charlie to sleep in a cot at the end of the bed and went into the ensuite for a shower. A little time later she sensed him get into bed beside her, slightly damp and smelling of soap and mint. After a short silence, though, it was obvious he was still awake—she hadn't told him yet, but he snored gently when he was really asleep—and it occurred to her that they may as well revisit familiar ground while they were alone.

"Ivy," she murmured.

"Mmm," was the non-committal reply.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing." John reached out and traced a pattern over her shoulder with one finger. "Only, Harry and I had a great-aunt Ivy once..."

Molly bit her tongue, but she was getting a little sick of John shooting down most of her baby names with protests that they couldn't use the name of anyone he'd slept with, anyone Harry had slept with, or anyone involved in one of the cases he and Sherlock had worked on. That, as it turned out, excluded a lot of names. It didn't help if John was now extending his ban to the name of anyone he was related to or descended from, and it was also, she thought, a little unfair. It was her turn to choose. He'd picked both of Charlie's names, and she'd given in because one belonged to his mother and the other belonged to her.

"Lucy," she tried.

"Lucy Parnell. Greg's-"

"Oh, come on, John," she said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice, though she was surprised at how irritated she suddenly felt about the whole thing. "We can't exclude baby names because of someone _Greg_ slept with ten years ago."

There was a pause, and she could practically hear John processing that she'd nearly bitten his head off out of nowhere, and deciding how to react. "Okay," he finally said mildly. "We'll put that one in the thinking-about-it basket, then."

"Well… what names do you like?" she asked meekly, trying to be fair. After all, they _were_ his daughters, too.

John considered. "Eleanor," he finally said.

She made a face under cover of darkness. John, apparently, selected all of his baby name choices out of Victorian novels. But… well… they could shorten Eleanor to _Ellie_. She could live with that: Ellie Watson. Provided he didn't protest that _Ellie_ was too close to _Ella_ , the name of his therapist. "Okay," she conceded, without much enthusiasm.

"Sophie."

"I like that one," she said, a little too quickly.

"So you hated Eleanor." It was too dark to know for certain, but judging from his voice, he was smiling. "Okay," he said. "Imogen."

"… Imogen _Watson_ …?"

"Okay, good point," he conceded, falling into rumination for a minute or two before finally offering, "What about… Zoe?"

"Do you think we could maybe compromise and make that one into Chloe?"

"Sure… good…Chloe..."

She raised her head a little, suspicious that her notoriously stubborn husband had given in so easily; but there was no response. John had fallen asleep.

* * *

The room was dark and cold. At first John wasn't sure what had woke him, except perhaps the novelty of sleeping in a strange bed. Charlie was fast asleep in her portable cot, quiet and still. Molly was in bed beside him, in the act of reluctantly sitting up.

In an instant, a thousand thoughts went through John's head: the bride in the hall had been right about the chicken after all. Molly was sick. She had food poisoning. Which was possibly going to result in premature labour, while they were snowed in and the roads were all closed…

And then he heard what had woken them both: a knock on the door. This time it was followed by Sherlock's muffled voice: "For God's sake, John, open the bloody door."

Without pausing to find the bedside lamp in the darkness, John leapt up and crossed the floor, fumbled with the lock and chain and threw the door open, letting in a flood of light from the corridor. Sherlock stood on the threshold, bed-haired, bare-footed, dressed in a pair of grey tracks, a t-shirt with numerous rents and chemical stains on it, and a red silk dressing gown.

"What's going on?" John demanded. For all Sherlock's dramatic appearance, this didn't necessarily signify an emergency… or it didn't signify an emergency for anyone who wasn't Sherlock. "Is something wrong?"

"Not anymore," he said. "Get moving; we've got a case."

John blinked, still more than half asleep. "A case?" he repeated blankly. "What, is someone—"

"Someone's very likely dead, and we're wasting time talking about it," Sherlock said briskly. Then, apparently registering John's expression, "Oh, will you relax? Nobody we know. The other wedding. Are you coming, or should I go without you?"

Faintly, coming from the east wing of the Hall, John now heard the confused babble of voices, and among it, hoarse male crying. He turned to Molly, standing at his shoulder, in the act of wrapping a dressing gown around herself.

"John-"

"Go on," Molly said. "I'll come and see if I can help you once I sort Charlie out." Charlie, exhausted after her long day without her customary nap, hadn't even stirred at the sound of Sherlock's voice, which almost always got her attention.

With an apologetic glance back at Molly, John followed Sherlock along the narrow, low-beamed corridor and down a steep spiral staircase, so flimsy that John had been hesitant to use it on his way up to bed earlier.

"You going to tell me what's going on now?" he asked Sherlock as they climbed down.

"The other bride," Sherlock said shortly. "Stabbed. I think she's dead. That's your department."

Although this was possibly even less illuminating than knowing nothing at all, John did not ask for an elaboration. After making an L-turn on the landing below, they arrived in a shorter, wider corridor and almost ploughed into a crowd of people assembled around the open door to one of the rooms. Melissa, dressed only in a white negligee and kimono, was sitting down a distressed young Asian woman who was wearing even less. They caught a glimpse of Hayley nearby, trying to push her way through the crowd of strangers—guests of the other wedding—toward the door. In the doorway, Jacob Dyer, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, was blocking the way in and repeating, "Please, everyone, just step away from the doorway…". Although they couldn't see her, both then heard Sally Donovan snapping "Did you hear what I said? Keep back. Well back…" Behind them, from further inside the room, they could hear a man keening in an oddly hoarse, high voice.

"Let us through!" Sherlock, taking advantage of his voice and height, started to elbow a path through the crowd. John heard Donovan's voice again, but couldn't make any words out; after much elbowing and shoving, they both finally arrived in the bedroom doorway. Dyer had been blocking it with both arms against the jambs, but he put one down long enough to let them through. On his way, John noted that the door's handle and lock were both broken, and there was a large chunk missing out of the frame. Someone had broken it down by force.

Greg Lestrade was crouched down on his heels near the foot of an unmade double bed. Beside him, a young man Sherlock recognised as Stewart Hayden was on his knees, clutching Elizabeth, white and limp, against his chest. His white t-shirt and the pink babydoll nightie she wore were both smeared crimson.

"Mr. Hayden," both Sherlock and John heard Greg say in low tones. "Please, if you could just let me—"

Getting Stewart Hayden to respect the integrity of the body and crime scene was a lost cause, and everyone present knew it. John carefully made his way over to him, trying not to compromise the already-compromised evidence.

"Mate…" He put one hand on Stewart's shoulder and edged in to have a look at the woman he held. Stab wounds to the chest; hard to say how many.

"No," Stewart gasped, grabbing at thin air with his fingers. "Please, let me…"

"It's okay, mate, I'm a doctor, just let me help…"

But John, easing the blood-soaked woman from Stewart's lap to his own, knew entirely well that it wasn't okay. There was little point in it—the woman's eyes bulged, open, unblinking, as if she saw something on the ceiling that horrified her—but he took her pulse anyway. Or would have, if she'd had one to take. After half a minute, he looked over to Sherlock, silently observing by the doorway, and then to Greg. He shook his head.


	4. Lying to Me

The ensuite, like the rest of the honeymoon suite, was technically a crime scene. But there was nowhere else to hold a private conversation, and nobody, not even Sherlock Holmes, was going to be in a lab analysing fibres and fingerprints any time soon, judging from the snow still being thrown against the windows. Phone in hand, Lestrade locked himself into the little bathroom, listening for a moment to John trying to calm down Stewart Hayden. So far Sherlock hadn't ventured a word, but that wasn't a bad sign. It meant he was mentally busy.

Commissioner Tom Hale was easygoing and got on well with Lestrade, on the half-dozen or so occasions that they'd spoken in person. He even, theoretically, got on with Sherlock Holmes. That said, Lestrade imagined that nobody would be impressed with being woken at half-past three on New Year's Day to be told about a murder that had happened nowhere near his jurisdiction, and his instincts were right on the money.

"Unless you can find someone there who outranks you," Hale said once he'd taken in what had just happened, "you need to head up this investigation, Lestrade. No time to be lost."

Lestrade gritted his teeth. Even though he outranked Donovan, she was procedurally and professionally capable of heading up the investigation herself. She'd just in the last week found out she'd lost a promotion to Detective Inspector to Eamon Alexander, the Met's biggest lick-arse, and would probably jump at the chance to have another Solve on her record to rub in Alexander's face. He decided at the last second not to point this out to Hale and bring it up with her later. "Yes, sir," he said instead. "I've got Detective Sergeant Donovan and Detective Constable Dyer here with me. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, too."

"What are you all doing in bloody Yorkshire? Party, is it?"

"Wedding, sir. Mine."

"Oh." Hale stifled a yawn. "I had no idea you were on leave. Well, I'm sorry to hear it, but it's hardly my fault you're snowed in for the foreseeable. Not such balmy weather down this way, either—cold as a witch's tits, if you don't mind the expression. What do you need to get on with this?"

"A forensics team and twenty detectives," Lestrade said wryly. "But since the roads are all closed and nobody's allowed in or out, I suppose I'm going to have to make do. So I need authority granted to deputise suitable civilians for investigative work."

"Ah, see, that one's difficult, because-"

Lestrade rolled his eyes. "So far as I can see, there's no connection between the other wedding party and mine," he said.

"Not that you _know of_ , but that's what an investigation is for, if I've got it right. And it's going to be damned awkward if you deputise one of your guests and it turns out they're the long-lost sibling of the bride and murdered her for an inheritance or something."

"Marriage invalidates any standing will, so I don't think that's likely." Lestrade heard the irritation in his own voice, but couldn't quite bring himself to pull it back. "What's more likely is that with almost no resources, the killer will get away with this. And depending on their motive, they may go at it again. While we're all locked in with him, her, or, God help us, it."

This last possibility wasn't as far-fetched as it first sounded. A year before Sherlock had met John, Greg had employed his services on the case of a murdered woman in Kensington. She'd been found in her own home, dismembered, with her nose, lips and eyelids ripped off and her eyes gouged out. The culprit had turned out to be the woman's (supposedly) tame pet chimpanzee, who'd been having a bad day on top of a difficult adolescence and had turned on her when she'd tried to lock it in for the night.

Down the line, Hale sighed. "Lestrade-"

"Or," Lestrade continued, "I could just shut the room up with the body _in situ_ on the floor, and do nothing until the roads are open and we can get techs in to examine the evidence."

"That sounds like a cock idea."

"Of course it's a cock idea. The case will be stone cold by then, and the less we say about what the body will be like the better. _My_ idea is to get onto things right away, especially while the only consulting detective in the world is literally a captive audience. I _need_ human resources. Sir. And since I can't get them from outside this place, the next best thing would be to get them from among people I know and trust."

Hale sighed again. The late hour and horrible weather was working to Lestrade's advantage; more than anything, Hale wanted to get off the phone and go back to sleep. "Right," he finally said. "Deputise whoever you need to. And keep the court case in mind at all times."

However roughly he put it, Lestrade had to admit that Hale had a point. If he caught the alleged murderer and this went to trial, he'd have to get up and explain to a defence team and jury just whom he'd allowed to be involved in the investigation, and why. It could, done badly, be a godsend to a defence team. All they had to do was argue that he'd been biased, that he'd deputised someone who was biased or incompetent or who had slipped up, and the entire thing would be thrown out of court on a technicality.

There was a laminated printed sign next to the bathroom mirror asking guests to please go easy on the plumbing, as it was believed to be original and installed in the 1890s. He wrapped his hand in a dry flannel and turned the squeaking, groaning tap on. The water that eventually came out of it was icy, but that was exactly what he needed to splash on his face to wake himself up before he opened the ensuite door again.

Any hopes he'd had that he was having a particularly vivid nightmare were fast fading. Elizabeth Hayden lay dead on the floor, exactly the way he'd left her. Stewart Hayden was nowhere to be seen—presumably either John had convinced him to leave or Sherlock had forced him to—but Donovan had made her way into the room and was standing alert and silent near the closed door. Beyond it, they could all hear Dyer practically begging distraught staff and guests to step away from the doorway. John knelt on the floor beside the dead woman, gingerly examining the rents and bloodstains on her negligee; but for some reason, Sherlock seemed completely uninterested in the corpse. He was prowling around the periphery of the room, examining the window, the curtains, the bed, the door frame.

"Right," Greg said. "So I just got onto Hale, who's in a right mood after being woken up, and apparently, I'm in charge of this investigation."

There was an unspoken, sarcastic coda: _Even though I'm on leave, got married fourteen hours ago, and I'm supposed to leave for my honeymoon on Thursday._

"Congratulations," John said. "So does someone want to explain to me what the hell happened?"

Greg looked at Sherlock. "I wasn't here for the beginning of it," he said. "And I think Sherlock came even later. The victim's name is Elizabeth Hayden. Not sure of her age or origins yet, except that she got married here yesterday, an hour after Mel and I did."

Sherlock opened his mouth, as if to fill in those scintillating details, but then thought better of it and let Lestrade continue.

"Our room's next door… well, 'round the corner, anyway," he was saying. "Both of us, me and Mel, woke up to a hell of a racket—someone banging on the door, a lot of shouting. We both assumed at first that there was a fire. We came out to see what was going on and there was probably a dozen people in the hall already. One of the night staff—she's out there now, tiny blonde girl in a black shirt, I don't know her name—had the keys in her hand and was trying to open the door, but nothing doing, apparently."

"Could you hear anything from behind it?" Sherlock asked him. And then, seeing John's questioning look, "The night porter's name is Allison Marr, if anyone's interested in the facts of the case. She came and woke me—"

"Yeah, I asked her to," Lestrade interrupted.

"Yes, but my point is, by the time I arrived on the scene, the door had already been broken down and Stewart Hayden had run roughshod over the crime scene. I need to know what it was like before I saw it."

"I thought," Lestrade began slowly, "that I could hear a kind of coughing noise from behind the door, just for a few seconds, but it was kind of hard to hear over the commotion everyone else was making. I definitely got the impression someone was alive in there."

"And?"

"It all happened fast from the time I got there—half a minute, if that. One of the other staff members—I heard the young woman call him Tim—came through the crowd with a fire extinguisher and knocked the door in with it. We found Mrs. Hayden on the floor, pretty much like she is now. And here's the thing: she was on her own in here, and no knife anywhere near her. Or anywhere else in the room, as far as I can see. Stabbed to death alone, in a locked room, with an invisible weapon."

"That's impossible," Sherlock protested. He sounded as if he wasn't sure whether to be intrigued at what might be a Level 10 mystery, or annoyed that the universe had come up with something it shouldn't have.

"Of course it's impossible. But it happened, didn't it. I don't know about you, but I'm impressed."

Sherlock brushed aside the quip. He seemed to be deep in thought for a few seconds. "Were you first in the door?" he finally asked.

"Practically." Lestrade thought back. "The first person in was Elizabeth's mother, I think," he said. "But the husband reached her first. A young guy with red hair, that Allison Marr or whatever her name is, and another woman who I think was the bridesmaid. She sat down on the floor and started having hysterics. Mel's been with her since."

"No weapon," Sherlock repeated to himself, grey eyes gleaming with interest as the possibilities of the case presented themselves. "Behind a locked door…"

"Good one, isn't it?" Lestrade said amiably. "John, any thoughts?"

"Not many," John said from the floor, rocking back on his heels and gesturing to the dead woman. "Stabbed twice. Or at least, there's two holes in her clothing. Very little blood. Most of her bleeding was probably internal, and I'd say she died quite quickly. Here, you can see the blue marks around her mouth." He pointed. "Choked on her own blood, is my guess. We'll know more when Molly comes down to have a look."

Recruiting a heavily pregnant woman to examine a corpse at nearly four in the morning didn't sound like a great idea to Greg Lestrade, but since it seemed like a great idea to her husband and doctor, he decided not to give his opinion.

"Sir," Donovan said from the doorway, speaking up for the first time. "What do you want me to do?"

Over his career, Greg Lestrade had developed certain skills in how to control and move a crowd on the verge of becoming uncontrollable. After joining the police force in 1982, barely out of school, he'd spent the first eighteen months in a uniform and high visibility vest, usually on street patrol in the worst parts of Bristol's nightclub district or knocking on the same flat doors every week, breaking up drunken brawls and domestic violence incidents. He'd had a lot to prove, since he'd been conspicuously good-looking - almost beautiful - at eighteen. His first nickname on the force had been 'Pretty Boy', and he'd been the victim of some merciless and sometimes violent hazing.

But he'd got around all that by being easy-going and likeable, and distinguished himself professionally by being hard-working and persistent. After the eighteen months from hell, he'd been promoted to a Level 2 PSU officer, trained in Public Order and Riot Control. It had been Thatcher's Britain at the time, and the IRA were busy, too; it had been a relief when he'd finally earned his way out of the Uniforms and into plain clothes detective work, and finally into the Bristol Murder Investigation team as a Detective Constable, several months before his thirtieth birthday.

"We need everybody out," he said to Donovan. "Well out. In the hall downstairs where they had the reception. All of them, together. But try to make sure nobody's talking too much—stirring things up or trying to get their stories straight. From there, we'll run a few preliminary interviews, identify the most likely suspects, and concentrate further on them, narrow things down."

Donovan nodded. "What about our lot?" she asked. "I don't mean Jake and me, either. I mean, your normal guests, like, your family and Mel's friends."

For a second, Greg had almost forgotten that there even _were_ other guests. "Okay," he said, exhaling. "The best thing would be to instruct all our guests to go back to their rooms and stay there for the time being. Except I want Matthew to go to Lorraine, and Hayley to head down to Molly and offer to look after Charlie while Molly's helping us here."

Donovan blinked. "She's going to love that," she warned. "Suitable job for a woman, and all that."

"I don't care. She's not a police detective, consulting detective, doctor, forensic psychologist or forensic pathologist, and Charlie knows and trusts her, so she's going to have to just cooperate for now."

"Good luck," Donovan muttered.

"And to you, since you're going to be the one to tell her," Lestrade said cheerfully. "I need to find Mel. And we all need to write down statements as to exactly what we were doing and what we saw from the time we woke up. Quickly. Before we all start doubting what we saw."

Donovan nodded. "I'll come down with you," she said. "I've lost my husband somewhere. He's probably still in the pub downstairs."

"That's the other thing." Lestrade stopped in the doorway with her. "This goes for everyone," he said, looking at Sherlock and then at John. "It's New Year's Day. A lot of drinking went on last night. I know I didn't crash until nearly two, and that was, what, just over an hour and a half ago? I feel all right, but there's no way I'm sober."

"I'd hesitate to get behind the wheel right now," Donovan admitted. "Had my last drink just past one, I think. Got any solid, medical ideas on how to sober up, Dr. Watson?"

John shrugged. "Sleep it off," he said. "Which, I know, you can't. Take a cold shower, drink a pint of water, get something to eat and some strong coffee. That's about all you can do without a saline drip and a stomach pump."

Lestrade ran his hand through his hair. "Yep, coffee right now sounds good," he said wearily. "I'll tell the staff that the best thing they can do to help the investigation is make sure we're all caffeinated..."

* * *

John was examining the rents in the dead woman's negligee again, and barely noticed as Lestrade and Donovan left, shutting the door behind them. He did, however, hear Lestrade using his Public Order voice to give an order for rubberneckers and all other interested parties to clear from the hall immediately, Or Else.

"Having fun over there?" he finally said to Sherlock, who was over against the far wall, examining the windowsill.

"Bolted from the inside," Sherlock muttered.

"What?"

"The window. It's got a slide bolt, like the door, and it's bolted from the inside," he said. "And even if it wasn't, it's a third-floor window with an inch-wide sill and a sheer drop into a raging snowstorm."

"Circus performer?" John suggested, only half-seriously. Sherlock, straight-faced, shook his head.

"Not this time," he said. "No human being, not even a circus performer, can pass through a bolted window without damaging it."

"Chimpanzee?"

"John, can you even hear yourself?"

"Sorry." It was possible, John thought, that he wasn't as sober as he needed to be just then, either. Good thing Molly was. He kept his thoughts to himself for a few moments while Sherlock examined the curtains and the carpet around the window. Finally, he came over and dropped down on his heels beside John to examine the body. He took the dead woman's hand roughly, turning it palm-up and examining her nails for a few seconds.

"No defensive wounds," he finally said.

"Nope. Not that I can see," John agreed. "But that's more Molly's department than mine."

"I spoke with this woman a few hours ago," Sherlock muttered. "She told me someone had been threatening to kill her."

John's eyebrows shot up. "Really? Who?"

"If she'd told me, I'd probably have solved the crime by now."

"Oh." John flinched slightly from the verbal finger-slapping and subsided, reasoning that further details about Elizabeth's possible murderer would only come out when Sherlock was good and ready to give them. In any case, he was more interested in Sherlock now than in the body of Elizabeth Hayden. There was something in his heavy mannerisms that he didn't like. "Hey, Sherlock," he finally said, voice barely above a whisper. "What did you mean?"

"Hmm?"

"When you came and got me." John sought out eye contact with Sherlock, who seemed determined to look at just about everything in the room except his friend's face. "Just something you said. I asked you if there was something wrong. And you said _not anymore,_ because we had a case."

"You know I enjoy my work."

"That's not the point I'm making, and you know it. What was wrong _before_ this woman ended up dead?"

"Oh," Sherlock said. He sounded blank, but then paused for a few seconds, thinking this one through. "Well, you know," he said briskly, finally looking directly at John for a second. "Weddings. Not really my thing, I'm afraid. I was bored. This solved my boredom."

"…Yeah," was all John said. But in his tone was a distinct note of _Why do I think you're lying to me, just a bit?_


	5. Incompatible With Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, truly, if you've seen The Six Thatchers and you're still willing to come with me on this little AU adventure, where life isn't quite so unrelentingly cruel on our favourite characters.
> 
> In case that wasn't obvious: I'm distressed, and not in a fun way. Follows, fave, reviews, or even a PM to tell me life will actually go on would all be appreciated. I love you lot x

 

**_Extract from the Witness Statement of Det. Inspector Gregory Peter Lestrade_ **

_At approximately 1:40 am on January 1st, my wife and I (see statement of Melissa Kate Lestrade) retired to bed in the room next to the victim's. At the time I wasn't aware of whether anyone was in the room next door. I fell asleep at approximately 2:15am and at the time did not notice any sounds or presence in the room next door._

_At approximately 3:20am I woke because I thought someone was hammering on our bedroom door. There were voices in the corridor and I thought the building might be on fire. My wife and I got out of bed and I opened the door into the corridor where I saw a crowd of people. A member of staff, Allison Marr, was attempting to open the hall door of the suite next door using the keys. With her were a number of people but not knowing who they were, I didn't recognise anyone in particular. After approximately half a minute another member of staff, whom I heard Allison Marr call Tim, another member of staff, who came through with a fire extinguisher and managed to break the door down._

_I was the fourth person into the room. Ahead of me were the victim's mother, Maureen Ross, the victim's husband, Stewart Hayden, and Stewart Hayden's brother and best man, Alec Hayden. Immediately behind me was, among other people, my wife Melissa, Allison Marr, Tim, and Ishani Parikh, Elizabeth Ross's best friend and matron of honour. I did not know or recognise anyone else in the crowd at the time._

_Elizabeth Hayden, nee Ross, was lying on her back on the floor at the end of the bed, parallel to the doorway. She was wearing a pink nightdress and no shoes. The state of her underwear wasn't immediately obvious and her legs were in a relaxed position, flat against the floor and closed. There were no obvious signs of sexual assault. The only wound in evidence was a bloodstain approximately four inches across on the lower left quadrant of her chest, just under her left breast._

_Stewart Hayden reached the victim first. This was at approximately 3:25am…_

* * *

_**Extract from the Witness Statement of Melissa Kate Lestrade, PhD** _

_…When I reached the doorway Stewart Hayden had already thrown himself on the floor next to his wife and was holding the upper part of her body off the floor in his arms. He was in a lot of distress. The victim's mother, Maureen Ross, tried to approach him and he shouted something at her which might have been "stay back", but I couldn't be sure._

_My husband, Greg Lestrade, got down on the floor and crawled over to Stewart Hayden and started talking to him, trying to get him to let him help. He then asked a member of staff, Allison Marr, to fetch Sherlock Holmes from his room on the floor above. I don't remember if she went or not because the bridesmaid, Ishani Parikh, had sat down on the floor in front of the bed and started screaming very loudly. I managed to get her to her feet and out into the corridor. I sat her down on a sofa at the end of the corridor. As I was doing so, Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan arrived on the scene and started trying to clear the doorway. I saw her on her phone but don't know who it was to. A minute or so later Detective Constable Jacob Dyer arrived and pushed his way to the front of the crowd to the doorway and started to order people away from it. I don't remember seeing when Sherlock Holmes and John Watson arrived but it must have been only a minute or two later. All told, I estimate that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson arrived on the scene at approximately 3:35-3:40am…_

* * *

**_Extract from the Witness Statement of Sherlock Devereaux Holmes_ **

_… At exactly 3:29am I was woken by a knock on the door of my hotel room, which is directly above that of Detective Inspector Lestrade's. Allison Marr, one of the staff members, advised me there had been an incident and that Lestrade had summoned me. I reached the apartment of Elizabeth Hayden for the first time at 3:31am. Although I arrived after the door was broken down, I examined the door frame and the evidence suggests that the slide bolt was in place at the time that it was forced. It had taken a large chunk of wood out of the frame and the hinge was broken in two places. There was a circular dent near the door handle which indicated this had been done with the non-business end of a fire extinguisher._

_I asked Det. Inspector Lestrade who was in the room with the victim and he told me that he had seen for himself that she had been alone at the time the door was forced. Over the rather dramatic and distracting wailing of both Mr. Hayden and Ishani Parikh, who was escorted into the corridor by Melissa Lestrade, I ascertained that the window was bolted and that no egress to and from the room could be made through said window. Once I had established that there were no connecting doors to other apartments, skylights, roof tiles that could have led to cavities in the ceiling space or hidden windows in the room or its ensuite bathroom, I went to the floor above and fetched Dr John Watson, who returned with me. We reached the room together at exactly 3:39am. After I returned with Dr Watson, I made another examination of the area and reaffirmed that the window had not been tampered with in any way_ …

* * *

_**Extract from the Witness Statement of Dr John Hamish Watson, MD** _

_… When I entered the room the only other occupants were the deceased, Stewart Hayden, spouse of the aforementioned, and Detective Inspector Lestrade, who was assisting Stewart Hayden. Mr Hayden was holding his wife's body in some distress. I took Elizabeth Hayden's body from Stewart Hayden and confirmed that she was not breathing. I then attempted to take her radial pulse, followed by her carotid pulse. Both proved to be negative. I evaluated that the victim was not a candidate for CPR given the clean but very deep chest wounds, one of which almost certainly pierced the pericardium and probably the heart muscle itself._

_There was no response to pain stimuli and the victim's eyes were open and showed no signs of pupil contraction when exposed to strong, direct light. Once I had established that the victim's injuries were Incompatible With Life I advised Det. Inspector Lestrade that the victim was deceased and that the room needed to be cleared. This was at approximately 3:45am…_

* * *

"So there's Dyer's statement and mine, for whatever they're worth," Donovan said, slightly longsufferingly, as she came into the Hayden's room and handed four pieces of handwritten paper to Greg Lestrade. "We've got all the suspects rounded up, too, in the reception hall downstairs. Dyer's keeping an eye on them, though what exactly he's going to do if they decide not to listen to him is anyone's guess."

"Hey, you underestimate Dyer. He's got a great right hook; maybe he'll use that." Lestrade took the papers from her, glancing them over. "I'll come down with you once Molly's been in, and I'll bring Sherlock, John and Mel with me. We'll start with the immediate family and bridal party and work our way out. Logic and criminology says it was the husband. But I wasn't the only one who saw him in the doorway with the rest of us and run over to her, so unless he can teleport, he's in the clear."

"I'm not the consulting detective in the room," John remarked, "but if there's any way he could have teleported, he must have done."

"Why's that?"

"Well, why wasn't he in bed with his new wife at three in the morning? They'd just got married. He had the rest of his life to play poker downstairs, or whatever he—what _does_ he say he was doing, anyway?" he asked Donovan, who shrugged.

"I'll let you know," she said, "once we get a coherent word out of him. Can't you sedate him, or something?"

"I'd need something to sedate him with, to do that," John muttered. "I don't bring a pharmacy wherever I go."

Sherlock, who was still reading over his own statement, scoffed. "I told you—"

"Shut up, Sherlock," John said mildly.

"Maybe give Hayden a few shots of whisky to settle his nerves," Lestrade suggested.

"You want to get the best witness we have, and a major suspect, drunk?" Sherlock sounded appalled.

Lestrade shrugged. "I'm sure everyone else would enjoy his company a lot more."

"Greg," Melissa said as she finished up her statement and handed it over the desk to him. "You wouldn't happen to have anything on hand to deal with a massive hangover, would you?"

Lestrade blinked at her. "Yours? You weren't _that_ pissed."

"I know. But the current weather is a monster headache with a forecast of shivers and, I'm afraid, a chance of spewing."

John was still finishing up his own statement and appeared not to hear Melissa's comment. Lestrade got up and went out, apparently to his own room next door in search of something for Melissa's headache. He'd just returned again and shut the door behind him when someone knocked on it. Donovan, still sitting near the door in case of any unwelcome intruders, opened it slightly and then let in Molly, who was dishevelled and still in her dressing gown.

"Hayley found your room, then?" Greg asked her, reaching over the desk to give Melissa a bottle of aspirin, having first removed two of them for himself. Now that Melissa had gone and mentioned it, he felt kind of peaky himself. The room didn't feel overly hot, but he'd started to sweat in earnest; and it had nothing to do with the corpse on the floor that everyone except John had been studiously ignoring.

"Yes," Molly was saying. "Thank you for sending her, I was wondering what I was going to do about Charlie..."

Greg, glancing over at her, wondered for a second if he should pass the bottle of aspirin over. Even though she couldn't possibly be hung over, she looked pale and haggard, like she hadn't slept in a week. She tucked a strand of her hair behind one ear.

"Okay," she said, looking down at the dead woman on the floor, all business. "John, um. Could you help me for a second?"

With a wry glance at Lestrade, John helped Molly get down onto her hands and knees on the floor beside the dead woman, crouching on his toes on the opposite side of Elizabeth's shoulders. Molly leaned in and examined Elizabeth Hayden's face, sniffed her, closed her eyes with tenderness. After embarrassed glances at Lestrade and Sherlock, she slipped her fingertips under Elizabeth's armpits and then, gingerly, between her thighs.

"Died very recently," she said, swiping at her fingers with the baby wipes she'd perpetually carried with her since Charlie's birth and reaching over to pitch them in the wastepaper basket near the door. "Judging from her temperature. No more than an hour ago, and probably less. I couldn't tell you more without a thermometer. If she was sexually assaulted, it wasn't violently."

"Bit stupid to ask for cause of death…?" Greg ventured.

"Suffocation," Molly said almost immediately. "Probably by choking on lung fluid, or blood. You can see the cyanosis around her mouth." She reached over awkwardly, indicating the blue marks around Elizabeth Hayden's lips that John had pointed out earlier. "Could be strangulation, but there are no marks of that anywhere on her."

"What about smothering?" Melissa asked, emerging from the bathroom with a glass of water and downing the aspirin Greg had given her with it.

"Very unlikely she was stabbed and then smothered with a pillow; if she was, there'd be cotton fuzz around her face or blood on the pillows, and there doesn't seem to be. There's very little external blood, but judging from her colour, she bled a lot. It must be mostly internal. And see…" Molly tweaked at Elizabeth's nightgown, poking her fingers through the bloodstained scores in it. "One of these tears is bigger than the other, and jagged, like the knife blade, or whatever it was, was cut in at an angle. That one was probably the first, and although I can't be certain, I think it had a horizontal trajectory and went through the bottom half of her left lung. So the person who killed her was probably right-handed. The second was cleaner, neater. She didn't struggle for it. And judging where _it_ went, it probably pierced the pericardium and perhaps a major artery. But it was the choking that killed her, in maybe a minute or two."

"That coughing noise I heard," Lestrade said.

"Yes. That was probably her dying." Molly swallowed heavily and looked over the scene again in silence. "Judging from where that first stab wound is and from the fact that I can't smell alcohol on her, I think…"

She trailed off, reaching out with one palm to steady herself on the carpet.

"Molly?" John reached across and put one hand on her shoulder. "Hey…"

"Sorry," she blurted out, white to the lips. "Sorry, I just…"

"Never mind being sorry; what's wrong?"

"I'm going to be sick—"

John turned around and reached for a wastepaper basket near the doorway, pulling it over just in time for Molly to vomit into it. "Oh, God," he said, reaching across to hold her hair out of her face just as she went through a second round of heaving.

In the following ten seconds of confusion, several things happened. Melissa shot out of her seat, sending the chair toppling onto the floor, and ran for the ensuite. After a second's hesitation, Lestrade got up and went after her. Donovan headed out the suite door, as if to go for help, but Sherlock dropped down onto the floor where John was trying to comfort Molly, who was by then heaving into the wastepaper basket for a fourth time.

"John-"

"Food poisoning," he said grimly, without looking at Sherlock. "I didn't think there was anything in it, but when I was out in the corridor with Charlie last night, I heard Elizabeth Hayden complaining the chicken served at her reception had been raw."

"The chicken served at ours wasn't," Sherlock protested. "I had it. So did you, and we're both perfectly fine. You think _I_ wouldn't have noticed if there was something wrong with the food? I get so many death threats, I should employ a professional food taster—"

"You think Molly, and now Melissa, are faking it?" From the bathroom, they could hear Melissa retching in between Molly's gasps, and Lestrade talking to her in a low voice. Before Sherlock could reply, John gave Molly his full attention again. "Okay," he said softly. "All right, Molly, take a breath…"

"I'm so sorry," she managed to get out.

"You're sick, Lolly, you can't help it. Just take it easy." John looked at Sherlock again. "She needs to be put into bed, right now," he said.

"Lestrade and Melissa's next door," Sherlock said without hesitation. "It's the closest, and the only one that will avoid any stairs."

"Melissa will need it, from the sounds of things," John protested weakly, though it was token chivalry. From behind the bathroom door, they could still hear the new Mrs. Lestrade in some distress.

"I don't care what Melissa needs, and frankly, neither do you. Melissa's not eight months pregnant. Hold the door open for me." Sherlock pressed his hand against Molly's sweat-soaked shoulder. "Molly," he said. "I'm going to carry you. Can you put your arms around my neck?"


	6. The Missed Beat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone reading. This was posted a few hours ago, was taken down due to some issues, tweaked slightly and is being put back up. Feedback revered. x

John hurried over to the kitchenette in Greg and Melissa's room and filled a glass of water while Sherlock settled Molly on the bed, or tried to. When he came back to the bed with it, she was trying to sit up.

"No… I'm all right, I'm fine, I just need a minute…"

"You're not fine, Molly, you've got food poisoning." John did a quick calculation in his head. Salmonella took at least eight hours to kick in. Dinner had been at seven o'clock, or nine hours before. "There was something wrong with the chicken at dinner," he admitted, sitting down on the mattress beside her and, not knowing what else to do, awkwardly rubbing between the shoulder blades. Her nightgown was soaked with sweat.

"Why didn't you warn me?" she asked in a little voice.

"I didn't want everyone paranoid that they were about to get sick if they weren't…" John paused as Molly vomited again, or tried to, in the little plastic wastepaper tub he'd brought from the other room, not otherwise knowing what to do with it.

"John, will you please listen to me? There was _nothing wrong with that chicken_ ," Sherlock protested, by now back on his feet and pacing around, thinking at supersonic speed. "I'm extremely sensitive to taste and fussy about what I eat. I would _never_ eat something that had been contaminated, and even if I did, there's no chance I'd have done so and not be ill as a result. Bacteria, I'm sorry to say, works the same way on my body as it does on anyone else's. I also met Elizabeth Hayden, and she was a highly-strung, unpleasant woman who clearly loved to make vexatious complaints about things and was probably experiencing an extreme amount of buyer's remorse after spending far more money than anyone in their right mind would spend on a wedding reception. In addition, let's look at the facts: _Salmonella Enterocolitis_ is uncommon during winter and generally takes at least twelve hours to take effect on a healthy adult, and it certainly doesn't bloody discriminate between people the way you're claiming it does. The chicken wasn't responsible, because this _isn't salmonella."_

"It _has_ to be, Sherlock. You just don't get food poisoning from, I don't know…"

"You're persisting in the assumption that this is food poisoning. Please, I realise this is difficult for you, but consider other angles to this."

"Oh, what, so you're saying this is _poison_ poisoning…?"

Molly heaved into the tub again, but by this stage there was very little left to come up. John handed her the glass of water and urged her to sip at it, ignoring Sherlock for half a minute while he did. Finally, he took the glass back to the sink to refill it.

"The best thing you can do right now, Sherlock, is please solve the _murder_ as quickly as possible," he said. "So at least I don't have to worry about my wife and children being locked in with a demented killer as well…"

"John," Molly gasped out, trying to sit up again.

"No, no…" he said, rushing back over to her and trying to ease her down again. "Stay down, Lolly. It's fine. You're fine…" Looking back at Sherlock, he saw that he was now, apparently, absorbed in the contents of his phone. And he didn't appear to be texting for help, either.

"You're not seriously Googling _salmonella_ , are you?" John demanded, snatching the phone straight out of his hands and looking at the screen. "Sherlock, why the hell do you always have to be right all the-"

He stopped, still staring at the screen, and let out a breath. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.

"Lolly," John said distractedly over one shoulder. "We're just going outside for two minutes, is that okay? Two minutes. Just lie still, try to relax, and have some more water…" He went back to the bed, gave her a rather absent kiss on the forehead, and led Sherlock out to the corridor, shutting the door behind them.

"You don't have to sneak around researching things, Sherlock," he said immediately, in a voice barely above a whisper. "And I'm not an idiot, obviously it's going to have occurred to me, too. She's thirty-two weeks. As far as we know, the twins are just under five pounds each. If they're born today, they'll more than likely need oxygen at birth, will probably have jaundice, maybe have wet lung or transient tachypnoea, and may not be able to latch or swallow properly. None of these things are life-threatening… if they're born in a hospital with access to a neonatal intensive care unit."

Sherlock stared at him.

"So…" John rested his palm against the wall, as if it was holding him up, and swallowed. "So salmonella holds a really high risk of triggering premature labour. And that's why _I need this to be salmonella,_ Sherlock. I need to get my head around it. Be prepared for…"

He trailed off, and Sherlock waited for it: _prepared for the worst._

"Prepared for whatever might happen," John said instead. "I need to get things in my head… get them happening there, in case they _really_ happen…"

"I know," Sherlock said. Then, after a long silence, "What can I do to help?"

A million options were already going through his head. The primary one involved helicopters and flamethrowers forging a path through the winter storm outside to convey Molly—and Mel, for that matter—to the nearest hospital. Twenty minutes by helicopter flight. Dead easy. It was a wonder nobody else had thought this up before now…

"Solve the case, Sherlock," John said. "As quickly as you can. Because… you remember what I asked you to do when Molly had the twins? Even if it's today, I still want you to do it."

"Are you sure? Hayley's—"

"I know. But…" John broke off with a wince and coughed hard into his hand. "Sherlock, if something happens… I want to know that Charlie was safe with you when it happened."

* * *

"If this means you're pregnant, Mel, you've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do," Lestrade said cheerfully, sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He had no idea whether a constant string of jokes was _helping_ Mel, but if they were hurting her, she'd definitely let him know.

"I'll be too busy screaming to explain anything," she said, in between heaves. She'd been kneeling at first, but had rocked back into a sitting position to take the pressure off the tiles off her knees. "And then we'll get straight onto suing your urologist."

"Oh, let's do that anyway," he said. "Just to pay him back for causing me the worst pain I've ever been through. I'd sooner lose a limb than go through all that again." He thought, but did not say, that Julie's insistence on his having a vasectomy after Matthew's birth—a premature, emergency caesarean that had made her terrified of further pregnancies—had probably been the first step in the disintegration of their marriage. They'd both caused each other physical pain, in their own way, over their children.

Melissa suddenly looked alarmed. "Greg," she said, "I've never told you this, because I didn't think it _mattered_ , but you know the older method of vasectomy can heal itself without you realising it, right?"

"Oh, stop winding me up."

"… Said the father of a woman I work with. Google it if you don't believe me, darling." She paused to heave again. "Luckily," she said as soon as she was able, "this is definitely food poisoning."

"Luckily for who?" he teased.

"For me," she retorted. "But on the ridiculously remote chance that I'm also harbouring a foetus who managed to get around your vasectomy and my religious observation of the Pill, we're calling him Houdini and alerting the Vatican."

He laughed, then decided, at the last second, that now was really not the time for a conversation on what exactly would happen if Little Houdini did manage to come through after all. No, it wasn't likely. But accidents happened. "Looks like Molly got the jump on you and stole our bed," he said instead.

"Fine," Melissa muttered. "She can have it. I'll be making sweet, sweet love to this toilet bowl for a while..." She looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes; then, abruptly, she failed to aim, and he failed to move.

"Jesus," he said. "And I'm in bare feet, too..."

"I'm so sorry," she gasped, and she sounded it. "That's easily the most unsexy thing I've ever done..."

"Yeah, you owe me a new pair of feet, you've ruined these ones," he said, wiping the ones God had given him with a wad of toilet paper and throwing it into the toilet bowl. "Would you be jealous if I told you that you aren't even the first woman who's thrown up on me?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm just furious. I'm making plans as we speak to file for divorce." She smiled weakly, breaking off into a grimace and vomiting into the toilet bowl again, making it this time. "This," she said when she was able, "is horrible. It's godawful. It's the food poisoning from hell…"

"Yeah," he muttered, swiping at his forehead. He hated to admit it, but a wave of nausea and a cold sweat had just started to encroach on his role as caretaker. "I'm starting to see what you mean now…"

"What, you want some of this sweet porcelain real estate, my love?"

He didn't answer. Instead, for the first, last, and only time in his life, he physically pushed her aside in a hostile takeover of said porcelain real estate.

"Oh, look, maybe _you're_ pregnant," she said, though she was running the ball of her hand over his shoulder with a lot more tenderness than she often used with him.

"Shut your face," he muttered mildly.

"I'd love to shut my face for the time being," she replied. "At least, I'm kind of sick of vomit coming out of it..."

He didn't reply in words, but his agreement was obvious, all the same.

"Do you know," she went on, "I think we've seriously hit rock bottom in the gross stakes, and less than a day after we signed papers, too."

"Don't say that," he said. "You know what generally happens after the vomiting, right?"

"No bloody way," she said. "Go get your own bathroom for that, it's _not_ a tandem event." Then, after a pause, "Greg, how the hell do we _both_ have food poisoning if we didn't even eat the same thing at dinner?"

He was just pondering this one too when there was a businesslike rap on the bathroom door, and they both heard Donovan's voice from behind it. "Hey, can I open the door?"

"Why in God's name would anyone want to?" was the rhetorical response from Greg, but she was already fumbling with the door handle. Abruptly, she sprang back, apparently as the smell hit her in the face.

"Jesus," she said.

"Told you." Lestrade swallowed heavily in spite of himself, leaning over a little to run the bath tap and splash cold water on his face. "I'd stand well back if I were you, or you'll take a direct hit. Get any important information from our friends downstairs?"

Sally's eyebrows shot up, as if she was surprised he was still interested in the case. "Alibis all over the place," she said. "But every guest's alibi is that they were with at least one other guest at the time the murder happened, and there's not a lot that staff can verify. I guess that's to be expected, past three in the morning. Maureen and her husband were in bed on the second floor. Stewart and Alec Hayden were in a private room off the bar, playing poker with Ishani Parikh from two thirty until the alarm was raised."

"Who raised it, anyway?"

"Allison Marr. She heard a commotion behind the door as she was passing along the corridor with towels. She knocked, no answer; tried the door, no answer. But whatever she heard behind it scared the shit out of her, so she ran downstairs for the keys to the door and raised hell."

"Would it be possible," Melissa said wearily, "for you two to have this conversation somewhere else but in here?"

"No." Greg swallowed again. "Sorry. They'll never get the vomit off the carpet." He took a deep breath. Donovan had just given him unexpected good news. He had no idea how Sherlock was at card games, except that he'd once nearly got the shite beaten out of the pair of them for exposing how Three Card Monte worked in front of a charlatan in a pub one night six years ago. But it was a well-known fact among people who knew him that Greg Lestrade was a more than competent Texas Hold 'Em player. He'd competed in tournaments for cash and won more than once. "Right, Donovan, take notes," he said. "You can play poker with two or three, but it's not a great game and if that's what they were really doing, they should remember a lot of this, okay? Separate them and don't give them a chance to confer with each other or send signals about what you're asking. I want details of the game. Where each of them were sitting. What hands they played. Ask them if they were playing the ace high or low, which cards were wild, what everyone anted when the cards were dealt, how the game went, who won, how much. Details. As many details as possible."

"Okay." Donovan hesitated. "But why?" she asked. "We know none of them were in the room when Elizabeth was killed. You saw them all go in, right?"

Lestrade wasn't coherent enough just then to identify what was troubling him about the scenario when the room had been broken into. It was true he'd definitely seen all three of them, and none of them had been in the room before the door had been broken open. But there was something else… and he needed to concentrate on throwing up just then, and not throwing up on Melissa, if he could help it.

"Yeah," he mumbled finally. "I'll figure that out later. Just go ask, okay?"

* * *

After gingerly inspecting the disordered bedclothes on the bed John and Molly had just vacated, Hayley drew the covers over and curled up, pulling one of the pillows under her head. In the cradle nearby, Charlie was still asleep, so heavily that she'd been genuinely alarmed and debated trying to wake her up, just in case there was something wrong. Having nothing to do but listen to Charlie's breathing and the muffled sounds of the Hall's guests in the rooms around her, she was about to drop off to sleep when there was a gentle knock on the door. She got up and went to answer it, expecting either her father or John and genuinely surprised to see Jacob Dyer.

"Hey," she said in a soft voice. She threw her arms around his neck to give him a squeeze, then looked around the corridor to see if they were being watched, more out of habit than necessity. Neither of them had quite managed to shake off the habit of sneaking around when they were each other, like a pair of mutual thieves, even though there was now nobody to hide the relationship from. Even Jake's mother had stopped scowling at Hayley every time the two came into contact with one another.

"How are you?" he asked a little anxiously, hands on her shoulders. "You're feeling all right…?"

"Yes," she said, frowning. "Why wouldn't I be…?"

"Everyone's come down with food poisoning… okay, well, not _everyone_. I'm all right. But your dad and Mel are pretty sick, and so's Molly."

"Christ," she said, in the open-faced way she'd inherited from her father, but hadn't realised yet. "When you say 'pretty sick'..."

"Not a lot you can do except hold the fort here, I think," he said. "I wouldn't think anyone's in any real trouble, but they're not having a good time, put it that way. I came to see if _you_ were okay, if you wanted a hand with…" He waved a hand at the cradle, clearly drawing a blank on Tiny Watson's name.

"Charlie," Hayley supplied. Jake, who loved small children even when they were being difficult, and who rarely had the opportunity to interact with Charlie, tiptoed over to the cradle and peeped over the bars.

He smiled. "She's cute," he said.

"She is, a bit," Hayley had to admit. "When she's asleep. Speaking of… it's still dark. Aren't you tired?"

"Buggered."

"I wasn't asking about your private hobbies, Jake…"

He chuckled, a little slap-happy for lack of sleep, and she slipped her hands under his arms, as if he was Charlie's age and she was trying to pick him up. He folded back onto the bed, where they curled up, legs intertwined; searching, listening.

"Listen," Jake finally murmured. "I have to go. Donovan will be looking for me. I assume she's in charge while your dad's under the weather."

She brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed his nose. "Okay."

"Call me if you start to feel sick, or if you need help with Charlie, okay?"

"Yep."

But Jake burrowed his face into her shoulder and kissed it, reluctant to leave. "Hayley," he said, voice muffled by her hair. "Once this is all over, we really need to tell your dad."


	7. Holding Back the Tide

Since both the Hayden's and the Lestrade's honeymoon suites were now functioning as makeshift infirmaries for the sick, the helpful staff at Arndale Hall had offered the police on site the use of their staff room as a temporary crime investigation base. It stood in stark contrast from the rest of the hall, being small, modern and rather shabby, littered with plastic chairs and cheap appliances, reeking of dishwater and sour milk. But there was enough surface space to set up an incident room of sorts, and that was going to have to do.

Even better, Lestrade thought as he lowered himself into one of said plastic chairs, there was a nice, clean bathroom approximately six feet away. Though that was no guarantee that it was going to be nice or clean for much longer. He hadn't thrown up for a whole fifteen minutes, which made a nice change and put him well ahead of Melissa or Molly, but that didn't mean he was about to run any marathons. Melissa, whom he'd left in the capable hands of her mother back in the crime-scene bathroom, didn't seem to be improving. And from the sounds of things, Molly was even worse. He thought, and not for the first time, that he should send someone to help John out with looking after her. The only problem was that with Hayley on babysitting detail and Melissa spending her wedding night with a toilet bowl for company, he had no idea who to send.

And since Dyer wasn't on hand either to be coaxed into doing it for him, he got up and started shakily making himself a cup of black coffee. He needed the pick-me-up. But there was something about the taste that curdled his blood; and anyway, coffee was never good on its way back up. Instead, he was struggling his way through a glass of tepid water when the door opened and Donovan came in, clutching a pile of papers.

"Okay," she said, slapping the papers down on the table between them and pulling up a chair. "So I wrote down everything I asked the three of them, and everything they said in response. But poker bores me stupid, so I've got no idea what they were talking about. Have a look."

Lestrade took the papers and looked them over in silence for a few minutes. From what he could see, the Hayden brothers were marked not only by their bright red hair, but their painful pretentiousness. Donovan had asked the grieving husband how a hand had played out, and in her police officer's shorthand, she'd written that he'd used cheesy nicknames for all sorts of gameplay: _pocket rockets, bullets, Cowboys, Snowmen._ For a second he wondered whether Donovan had reminded this bell-end that his wife was dead on their bedroom floor.

"You're not sick?" he asked Donovan at length.

"Hmm?" She sounded vague for a second. "Oh. No, I'm fine. I feel fine. Jake went up and checked on Hayley, and he said she's not sick, either… and your sister says everyone with them is fine, including Matthew-"

He gave a sudden hiss.

"What's the matter?"

"This," he said, leaning over the table and pointing to a particular line of her writing. "You're sure this is exactly what you asked them, and exactly what they said?"

"Word for word, even when those words were stupid." She stopped. "You've found the liar."

"Ishani Parikh."

"Oh, what, just because she's-"

"Donovan, your Indian husband recently cleaned me out of a hundred and thirty bloody pounds when we played together one night, so if you're about to accuse me of racial profiling, I'm not in the mood for it. Cut it out with the is-this-because-my-mum-is-Jamaican thing, okay?" he snapped at her.

Donovan's mouth fell open.

Lestrade and Donovan had worked together for nearly twelve years, and in that time, Lestrade had never commented on the fact that his sergeant was not white. It had been drilled into him from the time she'd been appointed to him to never single her out, and after about half an hour on his team, it had never occurred to him to do it. So where the hell had _that_ come from?

"Sorry," he said, rubbing his forehead with two fingers. "I'd say _I shouldn't have thought that,_ but honestly, I'm still wondering if I actually did."

"Oh, don't get all sensitive on me," she said. "You're embarrassing us both. Will you just tell me why you think Ishani is the liar?"

"They're all lying, actually," he said. "In their own, unique brand of stupid. Stewart says he was sitting to Alec's right, but Alec reckons he was the small blind, which would put Stewart on Alec's _left_. Alec got the seating arrangement right, but since there was only three of them playing anyway, that's probably just dumb luck. Both the Hayden brothers sound like they're wankers but they actually know how to play. They just haven't got their stories straight enough. But a hundred quid says they were never playing poker downstairs last night. Ishani here hasn't got the faintest clue how anything works."

"Like…?"

"You asked her if she got 'buttoned out'. She said she did. That's bollocks. Anyone who actually plays knows the term is 'blinded out.'"

"Good point," she said, but then fell silent until he raised his eyebrows and stared her down. "Just thinking," she said.

"Then do me a favour and think out loud, will you? All I can think of right now is 'Don't vomit on the nice sergeant, no matter how much you want to.'"

"Thanks. I can see why women love you so much." She sighed. "Okay, if someone asked me a question like that and I didn't have the faintest clue what they were talking about, right, I'd do a much better job of bluffing them than Ishani did. She's a pharmacist, so she can't be a complete moron, Greg."

"Okay," he conceded, "so she's not a moron. I'm not saying she is. What are _you_ saying…?"

"You didn't see her," Donovan began.

"What, just then? But I saw her when she was screaming the building down after we found Elizabeth."

"And didn't that strike you as a bit weird?"

"To be honest with you, I'm having trouble finding something that isn't weird about today."

She rolled her eyes. "Greg, we've worked on how many murders together? And okay, we've seen a few spouses behave like Stewart Hayden did, and more than few parents. But _that_ was excessive."

"They were best friends, weren't they? She was the maid of honour."

"I don't care. Something about her didn't sit right with me, and anyway, it's only been an hour or two since her best friend was murdered, and she's calmly telling me about runs and straights and bets and raises and rivers and Christ knows what other things. Only she's getting them so wrong I'm wondering how someone could even manage it." She set her mouth in a hard line. "Thing is," she said. "I'm wondering if she was telling me as much crap as she could so I'd pick her out and question her more closely."

"You reckon?"

"Look at all that slang, all those technical terms. People don't use slang like that when they're bullshitting, you know. They get as vague as possible, but they don't go using words if they don't even know what they mean. I'm going to bet she knows something, and she might want me to pump it out of her."

"God," he muttered, rising out of his chair. Nausea was fast rising again. "I think you might be right, Donovan. Even if she didn't kill Elizabeth, even if she doesn't know who did, she probably knows something that made her sit down on the floor of Elizabeth's room and scream… hang on, give me a minute…"

* * *

"Mycroft, _please."_

Sherlock was begging, and he couldn't bring himself to care whether his brother was smirking about it. He'd gone into the men's bathroom near the winding stairwell and was leaning against the sinks, phone at one ear, finger stuck in the other to hear Mycroft better down the line. Mycroft normally woke at five, but not on a Sunday, and he'd been particularly annoyed by Sherlock's call until he'd been given to understand the gravity of the situation at Arndale Hall.

"There's nothing I can do, Sherlock," he said, and even in a fit of childish pique, Sherlock could tell he was being sincere. And that was perhaps the worst of it. What was worse than Mycroft being obtuse? Mycroft being sincere. Mycroft saying he was helpless to act, and meaning it.

"I've already told you," he said. "It's very easy. Just send a helicopter, put Molly on it, and send it back the nearest hospital with a decent labour and delivery department and a neonatal intensive care unit."

"During a snowstorm? Are you particularly anxious that Mrs. Watson die in a helicopter crash?"

Sherlock reached out and turned one of the taps on, riffing it so violently that a spurt of icy water hit his shirt. He adjusted the flow and collected some of it in the palm of his hand to drink. It was true, as he'd already told John so many times, that he had none of the gastrointestinal symptoms that would indicate poisoning, by food or otherwise. But for the past hour he'd been nagged at with another sensation. He'd dully supposed it was thirst, but water didn't seem to be helping like he thought it would.

"For God's sake," he heard himself say after he'd splashed his face and turned the tap off. "This is what you do, Mycroft. You arrange things. You buy things. You _fix_ things." _The entire country dances to your whim, and now you're telling me you can't even send a helicopter?_

"Kind of you to say so," was the smug response, though for once Mycroft sounded like he might be trying to pull it back a little. "But while I might assist in the running of the government, Sherlock, I can't do a single thing to control the weather."

"King Canute, trying to hold back the tide."

"You misremember that story, little brother; Canute wasn't a madman trying to hold back the tide. He was proving a point to those who treated him as a god that he couldn't control a single drop of the ocean. Look, gentlemen. Look at this thing I can't do."

Sherlock took a moment to concentrate on his breathing. In. Out. In. Strange how something he'd done millions of times without even realising could abruptly become something he had to give himself a pep talk to get through. Through it, he realised that Mycroft had begun talking again, though his tone was a lot less harsh than usual.

"You know as well as I do that to try to evacuate anyone, by air or by road, in these conditions would be a far more dangerous enterprise than remaining where you are," he was saying, "and trying to hold out."

"Hold out for how long?"

"I don't know, Sherlock: once again, I remind you that I can't control a single flake of snow. But I've contacts within the Bureau of Meteorology, and they all agree that the snowfall can't last much longer. Come daylight, things will steadily improve. The day's expected to be fine and mild."

Daylight. Four or five hours away, by rough calculation.

"And you'll send a helicopter then?"

" _Sherlock_. Please, try to be sensible-"

"Molly's in danger," he blurted out. "John's children are in danger. And you want me to be _sensible?"_

"Losing your composure can't help anyone; so yes. I want you to be sensible."

Mycroft was right, and for a second, it gave Sherlock the impulse to hurl his phone at the wall. "Is it my turn to tell you what I want you to be?"

Mycroft sighed. "I'm going to make a phone call or two to the appropriate people, Sherlock, and I'll ensure someone is on standby to leave Leeds as soon as it's safe to. I imagine the more provincial hospitals in the immediate area aren't equipped for what Mrs. Watson requires."

"And you'll let me know when it all happens?"

"Immediately."

That was, it seemed, Mycroft's final word on the subject. He was already mentally planning out some other part of his day; hacking Russian intelligence or taking out a terrorist cell in Saudia Arabia, perhaps. Sherlock had a moment of genuinely wondering how long it would take Mycroft to temporarily forget that the Watsons existed. The best he could do to show his displeasure about this was to hang up without saying goodbye. The meek little _bleep_ of the disconnected line rang off the tiled walls around him, but it didn't have the same nuance as a slammed receiver.

A public bathroom was a public bathroom; but this one seemed relatively clean and pleasant, with only a faint odour of rust and brackish water. Sherlock retreated into the nearest stall, locking the door behind him and sitting down on the toilet lid before fumbling up his sleeve for the dwindling baggie of white powder he'd stashed there when he'd been called out of bed. Under the humming fluorescent lights, he sat looking at it for what could have been half a minute or half an hour.

_You have a case._

_Actually, you've got two of them. One infinitely more important than the other. Find the poison. If you can find the poison, you might be able to help Molly._

_You can't help her if you don't have the energy to. This is just the energy you need. You're helping her. This is how you're helping. By keeping yourself alert and focused._

_You promised—_

But somehow, things seemed to have already arranged themselves on his wrist without his even being aware of it, and he'd expertly rolled the banknote he'd used before in his other hand, though he wondered for a second why it was shaking so much. He disliked waste.

_You told John you'd look after Charlie._

_Stop this. Stop this_


	8. An Absolute Bitch

Leaving Greg looking the worse for wear in the staff room bathroom, Donovan headed back down to the reception hall where the Hayden wedding guests were still gathered. She'd intended to pull Ishani Parikh aside for a little more intensive interview on what had happened during the night. But as she pushed the double swinging doors open, she almost collided with Dyer, who'd been keeping an eye on the proceedings. He beckoned to her, and she followed him out into the corridor, wandering a few doors down to the fire escape doorway and casting a quick look around to see that they weren't being overheard.

"So I've been keeping my eyes and ears open," he said before she could open her mouth.

"Was it the sort of keeping your eyes and ears open where I don't mention it in front of Hayley?" she asked him a little spitefully. Flirting was a natural part of a detective's arsenal, just one of many methods of finding out information from people, and she used it too, even after her marriage. Lestrade was a living master of it, even able to pull off 'boyish charm' well into his fifties.

"You could put it that way," Dyer admitted without shame. "I did the just-a-cool-young-guy-wanting-a-chat routine at a few tables, that's all."

"Get anything interesting?"

He shrugged. "Not much. Mostly it's just everyone bitching about being locked in and wanting to get a drink or go back to bed. But you know what? I reckon that's interesting in itself."

Donovan did too, but she knew better than to coddle Dyer in his deductions at this stage of his career. He was coming perilously close to a payrise. "Oh?" she said instead. "How do you mean?"

"Well, apart from the victim's parents and bridesmaid," he said, "I haven't seen anyone too upset that Elizabeth's dead. Oh, the husband, of course, but he's a bit of a weird one, if you ask me. Could be faking it. I'll leave that to you; you're better at that kind of thing than me."

Dyer was a devotee of the idea of female intuition, regardless of how many times Donovan had tried to tell him it was not only scientifically baseless, but horribly sexist. She sighed.

"Oh. And so's you know," he continued, "we're not going to be able to hold up like this for much longer, um…" He trailed off unhappily. Dyer had never settled on an appropriate term of respectful address for Donovan. Lestrade called her by her surname at work, which suited her just fine; but Lestrade was her commanding officer, and could get away with it. If she'd been male, Dyer would have called her _Sir_. The female equivalent for senior officers like the newly-appointed DCI June Merivale, was _Marm_. Donovan had always hated the term, and she'd have given Dyer a dead arm if he'd tried using it on her.

"Then we're going to have to get into gear if we want to get through interviewing everyone sometime this week," she said. "There's just us at the moment, I think. Lestrade can't leave the bathroom, John can't leave Molly, and I don't even know what Sherlock's doing right now."

"Looks like four of this lot are out sick, as well," he said.

She blinked. "Really?"

"None of our main suspects. An aunt of the groom. One of Elizabeth Hayden's workmates… and two of her cousins, both women in their thirties. Same symptoms: spewing, diarrhoea, fever, the works."

"Lovely."

"Yeah, isn't it." He looked uncomfortable and finally admitted, "So I let them go back to their rooms and rest."

"You _what?_ Dyer, you were told-"

"John thinks this is a salmonella outbreak," he said. "And salmonella's contagious. I'd sooner have a suspect in their own room forging an alibi with someone than have a hundred people come down with vomiting and diarrhoea. Did you have a shower here this morning? I think the plumbing was installed by William the Conqueror. Imagine what'd happen if every toilet in the building got flushed every two minutes."

"Good point. But be it on your head if our murderer is faking salmonella so they can ditch the weapon, or work on their cover story, or kill someone else." She brushed aside her annoyance: the issue of the plumbing, or at least of contagion, should have occurred to her first. She didn't always gun for the human angle of every situation straight away.

"Anyway," she said, "if nobody looks like they're acting suspiciously to you, or that they want a private chat somewhere, play it cool but keep pressing until you get a result. Somebody here must know something about what happened. Hopefully, it's going to be Ishani Parikh."

* * *

Following Dyer back into the reception hall, Donovan spotted Ishani sitting at one of the tables next to Alec Hayden, whose hair was even brighter and redder than his brother's and who therefore stuck out in the crowd like a sore thumb, even if you factored out the ridiculous kilt he was wearing. Donovan caught Ishani's eye and beckoned to her; and did not escape her attention when Ishani's hand came to rest on Alec's shoulder as she got out of her chair and followed her back into the corridor again. She didn't say anything, though her manner was alert and respectful.

"He's nice," Donovan remarked casually to her as soon as the door closed behind them.

To Donovan's eyes, Ishani was pleasant but ordinary. In her early thirties, perhaps; she was slender and tall, with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, dusky skin and a heavy coil of dark, shining hair falling out of the elaborate upstyle it had been in for the wedding the previous day. Even if she hadn't been playing poker earlier, she obviously hadn't been in bed, either; she was still wearing a bridesmaid's dress of teal silk. And at Donovan's question, she looked studiedly blank. "Sorry," she said. "Who?"

"Alec Hayden," Donovan said, still keeping her tone casual. "I've never been into the gingers myself, but I can see the appeal. Are you two going out or something?"

Ishani stared at her, round-eyed; she looked so stricken that Donovan glanced around for somewhere to sit her down, if she had to. She was obviously either prone to hysterics or a spectacular actress.

"Listen," Donovan said. "That statement you gave me a little while ago, about the poker game you said you were playing with Stewart and Alec at the time that Elizabeth got killed. It was a bit bullshit, Ishani, and you know what? I think I've just figured out why. Woman of the world, and all that."

Ishani shook her head. "You don't understand," she said, voice shaky.

"Maybe I do," Donovan said. "So try me and we'll see. What do you mean?"

"I… this… you can't tell anyone about this. My family would kill me. Alec isn't the… right type of person… and…"

Donovan smiled grimly. She did understand. Her father-in-law was a _Kshastriya._ Although it had been before her time, she got the impression he'd made sure his own daughters had married people he deemed appropriate. He'd hit the roof when Rahul had brought her home for the first time, or so she'd heard; wrong type of person. His animosity had lasted roughly six months, and she'd just spent part of her Christmas holidays with her extended in-laws without anyone killing anyone else.

"Thing is, Ishani, I don't really care if you're sleeping with Alec Hayden," she said, sweeping her hair behind her ears with one hand. This wasn't strictly-speaking true; that she was sleeping with Alec Hayden might be important to the case, but she certainly had no intention of spilling the news to Ishani's family. "I don't care. I'm a murder detective, and I just want to find out what happened to Elizabeth." She paused. "And I'm wondering if you want to tell me something."

Ishani looked defiant, the outline of her nostrils hardening in a moment of outrage. She folded her arms. "No," she said. "I don't want to tell you _anything_ , actually."

"Well, too bad, princess; this is a murder investigation, if you hadn't quite noticed," Donovan retorted—then immediately reproached herself. Few things pissed her off more than a suspect with an attitude, but she'd been given feedback a few weeks before that it might have been this that had prompted the board to promote Eamon Alexander and not her. She immediately arranged her face into a more neutral expression and adjusted her tone of voice.

"Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have said that. But I mean it, you know: I'm here to solve Elizabeth's murder. And that's all. I don't care what or who you were doing at three this morning, as long as you weren't stabbing her to death in her room."

"Of course I wasn't!"

"Okay," Donovan said, holding her hands up to appease her. Time for a topic change. "Okay. I'm sorry. Can we still talk a little bit about what happened, though? Tell me what Elizabeth was like? Just what she was like. What kind of person."

Ishani was silent for a few seconds, red-painted nails at her lips, thinking. Donovan was on the verge of leaving the whole conversation for lost when Ishani ventured, "Elizabeth was an absolute bitch, actually…"

* * *

John occasionally told the story of his arrival at the hospital where he'd served his first eight months in Afghanistan, and he told it well: He'd gone into the main administrative area to fill out some papers, and one of the doctors on duty, Gordon Tait, had come out to greet him. "VD ward's down that way," he'd said, waving one hand to his right. "Gastroenteritis ward's over there." A hand to his left. "Malaria's the ward behind us. I'm sure, if you look hard enough, you might find someone with actual war injuries somewhere; but for now, it's piss, pus, vomit and shit the whole way. Welcome to Afghanistan, Dr. Watson."

And with a resume like that, John thought to himself, he was well capable of handling the current outbreak of sickness, even though piss, pus, vomit and shit was never fun for anyone. Certainly not poor Molly, who'd defied all his entreaties to stay in bed and taken refuge in the bathroom instead. She'd just graduated from uncontrollable vomiting to crippling stomach cramps, a development that had done terrible things to her husband's blood pressure, if not her own.

John stood at the bathroom door for a little while, listening anxiously to Molly moving around behind it. It sounded like she was undressing; he could hear her heavy, quick breathing. Eventually, unable to help himself any longer, he tapped on the door with two fingers. "Molly," he ventured.

"Sorry..."

He decided to bite his tongue instead of scolding her for her perpetual use of the 's' word. "Are you okay?" he asked instead.

"Yes." Though she hardly sounded it, finishing the word with a heavy swallow. "I'm… I just want to have a bath," she explained.

He frowned. Well, that was fair enough, but in her current state she was all too likely to pass out in there. "Do you want me to come in there and help you?" he asked, turning the door handle to check that she'd left it unlocked.

"No. No, I'm fine…"

As always, Molly had an interesting definition of the word 'fine'. John bit back on a moment of what felt like flat rejection. He and Molly had been married for over two years. They had a child together. He'd seen her give birth. Neither of them had anything the other hadn't seen before. Now was not the time for her to adopt any weird notions of modesty. "Sure?" he tried.

_"John."_

"Okay," he said, backing off carefully. Molly rarely snapped at him, though he had a sudden poignant memory: the torrent of abuse she'd levelled at him in the hour before Charlie's birth had been jaw-dropping at the time, though they laughed about it now. "Okay," he said again. "But please, could you… make a lot of noise in there? Talk to me. Let me know you haven't drowned or something, that's all."

The response was a non-commital little grunt and the squeak of the bath taps being turned on. Before John could speak again, the hall door behind him flung open with a bang and Sherlock strode in as if he owned the place.

"Where the hell have you been?" John demanded, more sharply than he'd meant to.

"Calling Mycroft." Sherlock whipped off his scarf and coat, laying them on the chair near the window. The central heating had been turned up far too high and was starting to fog the windows and cling to the curtains.

"And?"

"He's sending an evacuation helicopter as soon as the weather clears enough for it."

"That's the best we can ask for, I suppose," John muttered into his collar.

"He says the storm's likely to dwindle to nothing around daybreak. What can I do to help?" Anticipating the answer, Sherlock made his way over to the room's little kitchen nook and filled the kettle with an enthusiasm that John would have found more suspicious, had he not been almost asleep on his feet at the time.

"You can help by making coffee," he said, sinking down into one of the armchairs and shutting his eyes for a moment. He wondered if he should text Hayley again and ask how Charlie was. Last he'd heard, twenty minutes ago, she'd just woken up from the longest sleep she'd had in months and wanted to play. "Please, God, coffee. Don't even bother with the cup or anything, just put about two pints of it in an IV bag and hook me straight up."

A crash. John's eyes flew open. Sherlock was standing quite still, teaspoon in one hand, the shattered remains of a red ceramic cup around his shoes.

"Sherlock?" John got to his feet. "What's the matter?"

Sherlock was looking at the teaspoon in his hand as if he'd never laid eyes on one before, and had no idea what to do with it. After a few dazed seconds he shook himself out of his inertia and laid it on the sink beside him. "I… have to go and do something," he said.

"Do _what?_ You've gone really pale, Sherlock, are you sure you're not coming down with this thing too?"

"No." Sherlock screwed his eyes shut and kicked gently at the ceramic shards around his feet, though he made no attempt to pick them up. "No, I… I just need to see someone about something. I'll be back soon."

"Sherlock-"

"I'll be back soon. Sorry about the coffee."

Before John could ask him anything else, Sherlock had fled, slamming the bedroom door shut behind himself.


	9. Delayed Symptoms

To John's relief, Molly finally made it out of the bath without passing out or drowning. She refused his offer to let her help him with drying off or dressing again, but on consideration, let him coax her out of the bathroom and into bed.

"Sleep if you can," he said, pulling the blanket over her and fussing with the pillows. "Even if it's only for ten minutes at a time, it's got to be better than nothing."

"But what if I-"

"Then I'll change the sheets, Lolly, it's not a big deal for me to do that." He put one hand on her forehead, trying to gauge her temperature. She'd just emerged from a warm bath, so it was hard to tell. "Sleep, okay?"

"What about you?" she asked him.

"Me? I'm not going anywhere."

"But you… you _could_ , you know," she ventured. "I'm feeling a bit better."

John had a strong suspicion that "better" was a very, very relative term.

"If you need to go and help Sherlock and Greg—"

"It's fine, Molly. Don't worry about it. I'm not leaving you here on your own so I can go off and solve a murder. Anyway, Greg's sick and if Sherlock thinks I'm going to tag along after him whenever he runs out of the room, he's got another thing coming."

John pattered around the suite for a little while, cleaning up the shattered ceramic on the floor and listening to the hitches in Molly's breathing; her occasional, faint little moan. Just when he thought she'd fallen asleep, and he was contemplating finally getting around the coffee Sherlock had just cheated him out of, she put one hand on her forehead.

"John?" she said. "I've had a thought."

"Mmm?"

"About Elizabeth. About the murder… What if the murderer actually was still in the room when Greg and everyone else came in? I know they didn't see anybody, but-"

"What, you mean, like they were hiding somewhere?" John considered this. He had a vague recollection of Greg saying he'd ordered a search of the room and found nothing, but couldn't remember when, and if anyone had had an opportunity to sneak out beforehand. He and Molly had been blissfully asleep in their own room just over two hours ago, and now it felt like two months.

He really needed to text Hayley again. Maybe call her this time; talk to Charlie on the phone for himself. She loved listening to people down the line, even though she wasn't yet confident with the idea of talking back.

"Fairly sure they searched the room before you got there, but I'll let Greg know, Molly," he finally said to her, seeing that she wasn't going to be appeased by anything else. "Please, sleep."

* * *

Lestrade dragged himself over to the employee bathroom sink and looked at his haggard reflection in the mirror. Well, the inside matched the outside: he felt like hell. What he really needed, he thought, was a hot shower; but as far as he knew Melissa was still in the bathroom of the Haydens' room, and Molly was in the bathroom of his own. A do-over of his arms and neck with a warm washcloth was going to have to suffice for the present.

With shaking hands, he picked up his phone and scrolled through the address book, eventually landing on his mother-in-law's number. Even odds that Mel would be in any state to pick up her own phone, but Liz always answered hers promptly.

"Hi," he said. "I know, bit lazy calling you, but I don't think I'd make it back to the room right now. How is Mel?"

"Hard to say." Liz was honest to a fault. "Sherlock offered her the use of his room, so we're up on the third floor now. Sergeant Donovan locked up the crime scene behind us, and I assume she's got the key with her." She paused. "How are you feeling?"

"Bit better, actually," he said, and it was true; his condition had just upgraded itself from sincerely wishing he was dead to just feeling completely wretched. Vomiting improving; stomach cramps and sweating getting worse. "What about you? Sherlock?"

"I haven't seen Sherlock for half an hour, so I can't speak for him," she said. "I'm tired, but I think that's just from being up most of the night."

"Call someone if you need a hand, okay? Kim or someone."

"Of course I will. I'm not a martyr, Greg."

"No. Of course you're not." He cleared his throat, reminding himself that Liz was even more sensitive than her daughter to being patronised, especially by men. "Um. So if Mel-"

He was interrupted when the staffroom door crashed open. Donovan. She was breathless and dishevelled, with one shoulder of her shirt torn so that it was hanging off. "Greg," she said. "Sorry, but you need to come quick. Now."

"Gotta go, Liz." Lestrade hung up the phone and got to his feet faster than he thought himself capable of just at that moment. "What? What's wrong?"

"It's Sherlock. He's just nearly killed Azad Bayar, and I'm not so sure he's not going to kill Jake."

* * *

He followed her as quickly as he could down two flights of stairs, into the basement that housed the staff accomodation quarters of the hall. Before they'd even reached the bottom of the stairs they could hear angry voices; mainly, Lestrade realised, Dyer's. Donovan led him down the corridor to a tiny, utilitarian looking bedroom, something more akin to a budget hotel than a luxury mansion. Azad Bayar, wearing pyjamas, his face and shirt a mess of blood, was backed up in one corner. Sherlock was in the other, sprawled out on the bed with Dyer standing over him, wild-haired and sweat-soaked. There was more blood on Sherlock's hands and on Dyer's face.

"What the _hell…?"_

"Well put," Sherlock said breathlessly. He sat up, rubbing at his neck. "I quite agree. John was right, and that hardly _ever_ happens." He swallowed and took a deep breath. "Well," he conceded. "He was half-right."

"Right about what?"

" _Half-right._ He said this was salmonella, but he was wrong about the chicken. It wasn't the chicken. It was the tea."

"Tea? What tea?"

"The herbal tea." Sherlock made to stand up, but gave up halfway and sank down onto the mattress again. "Last night, just after dinner, the staff brought a tea trolley into the reception hall," he went on. "You had to have seen it. Two urns, one of black coffee and one of hot water—or about as hot as water is served in the hospitality industry. There was also a basket of tea bags, including peppermint and camomile tea. An American brand called Frontier. Contaminated with salmonella." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, retrieved the screen and held it out, but Lestrade was more interested in Jake Dyer at that particular moment and prepared to take Sherlock's word for it.

"Hang on," he said at last. "Doesn't boiling water kill off germs like that?"

"Most strains, yes. But Frontier's tea bags were contaminated with a serotype named _S. Senftenberg_ , known for being heat resistant, which is why they had to recall a product _intended to be placed in hot water in the first place._ It also explains why only some guests got sick, and to differing degrees. Almost everyone at the wedding reception last night was drinking alcohol, coffee, or both. But Molly wasn't drinking coffee because she's pregnant, and she certainly wasn't drinking alcohol. She drank herbal tea all night. Melissa had a cup or two-"

"And I had a mouthful of hers," Lestrade finished for him. "I told her it was disgusting and I couldn't believe she drank that crap. I should have spat it out."

"I don't think it would have done you much good by then."

"So, what, you decided to beat the shit out of the guy who runs the kitchen because-"

"Those tea bags have been _recalled_. Last month. Don't you remember?"

"No, Sherlock; I don't keep an eye on product recalls of tea I don't even drink."

"There was media attention over it: consumers urged to return any boxes they'd purchased for a full refund. Only Mr. Bayar over here couldn't even be bothered to do that, and as a result, he's recklessly put lives in danger. Salmonella poisoning can cross the placenta-"

"Donovan," Lestrade interrupted. "I need to talk to you outside. Dyer, hold up for me for two minutes more, will you? If Sherlock goes at Mr. Bayar here again, you've got my permission to break his face for him."

Donovan was all business as he led her out into the corridor and shut the door behind them, despite the fact that she'd obviously been involved in the scuffle as well. At least, Lestrade thought as he looked carefully at her, at least Sherlock had enough basic humanity left right now that he hadn't gone so far as to hit a woman. Over the past ten years, Greg Lestrade had been prepared to overlook a lot of things Sherlock had done, both to him and to other people. Hitting a woman was never going to be one of those things.

"Donovan," he said. "Take Jake and Mr. Bayar to the First Aid room, assuming they've got one in this place, and get both of them patched up as best you can. And I'll need at least a preliminary report of any injuries, because I'm assuming this is going to become a charge of battery. Keep an eye out for symptoms of delayed concussion in both of them."

"Sir." She nodded, seeming on the verge of saying something but not quite having the nerve to. Eventually she gave him another nod and led the way back down to Bayar's bedroom, throwing open the door without ceremony. To Lestrade's relief, all three men were more or less exactly the way he'd left them. He helped Donovan get Azad Bayar, who either couldn't or wouldn't venture so much as a word, to his feet. The blood on Jake's face probably made his own injuries look worse than they actually were. Both men seemed steady enough, Lestrade decided, watching Dyer and Donovan escorting Bayar down the corridor to find somewhere to clean up.

Anyone would think _Bayar_ was the obvious criminal here; and Lestrade had a feeling that this was exactly what Sherlock was thinking. Such a strong feeling, in fact, that once he'd shut the door behind them he turned and backhanded Sherlock, hard, across the right cheek.

"You idiot," he exploded. "You absolute _fucking idiot,_ Sherlock Holmes. Melissa and I can't be there for John and Molly right now, we can't even be there for each _other_ right now, and you've decided to spend the weekend coked out of your brain—don't. Don't tell me you're not high. John might have missed it, _probably_ because he's beside himself about his wife and kids, but I didn't. As for what you did to Jake-"

"I-"

"Shut up before I hit you again, because believe me, I could do it all day, or for however long it takes you to get the message," he said. "You can have any punch-up you like with Bayar over giving us salmonella, Sherlock, but if you _ever_ lay a hand on one of my constables again, I'm going to kill you, is that clear?"

Sherlock swiped his hand across his cheek. Lestrade's hand had left a vivid red mark on it.

"Is it _clear?"_

"Yes," he muttered. "Give Dyer my apologies."

"No," Lestrade said. "You're going to give him your apologies yourself, as soon as you're sober enough to mean it. It's about bloody time you took a bit of responsibility. In the meantime, give me everything you've brought with you, right now. Powders, pills, needles, the lot."

"I don't have anything."

"Sherlock-"

"There's nothing _left_ , all right? I've run _out."_

Lestrade put his head in his hands for a second. "If I find you with so much as an _aspirin_ when you've told me you've run out of drugs, God help you," he said. "You've got that sister who lives in Germany, right? Soon as we're out of here and everything's remotely on the normal, you're going to pay her a little visit."

Sherlock stared at him. "You're sending me to _Germany?"_

"No; I'm sending you to that bloody rehab centre in Surrey again, that's where I'm sending you. And once _again_ I'm giving you a chance to lie to John about where you're going, so he doesn't lose his shit and take Charlie to live anywhere else but in the home of a drug addict. You're forgetting, Sherlock. If she's your niece, she's also mine."

Sherlock, defeated, flopped back down on the mattress and covered his hands in his face, taking deep, shaky breaths. "I know," he finally said. "I know this… it looks like I-"

"Oh, no," Lestrade said, cutting him off. "No. What the hell are you doing? Sherlock, you don't sit down and cry when you fuck things up. You get up and you _fix them_ , if you haven't got the sense to not do them in the first place. I know you didn't really have a dad to teach you these things, but really, come _on_."

Sherlock's head snapped up.

"Oh, was that low of me? Probably. So's _getting coked up_ when John needs you, you irresponsible prick."

"I'm-"

"Shut it. I don't have the time and I don't have the sympathy right now. If you're serious about helping any of us, go down to the reception hall and wait there for Donovan. She needs help interviewing the Hayden's wedding guests, especially if you've just put Dyer out of commission. If I hear anything more out of you, _one more thing,_ I've got no problem at all with arresting you under restraint. And you're going to have all the fun of explaining to John why I did it." He winced and swiped at his forehead. "And now," he said, "if you could deduce for me where the nearest bathroom is, I might start to forgive you."

* * *

After being asleep on and off for roughly twenty minutes, Molly was restless again, sitting up, lying down, not knowing what to do with her pillows. Tensing up. Grabbing the bedclothes. There was only so much of this that John was prepared to watch.

"Molly," he finally said in tones that he tried to make sound idly curious. "Are you having cramps or actual contractions now?"

"I don't know," she said, brushing her sticky hair off her face with one hand, the other resting on her belly. "I don't know. It all just kind of hurts at the same time..."

He couldn't see why she _didn't know_ when she'd already been through unmedicated childbirth once, but reminded himself that he was about as qualified to weigh in on this subject as Molly was on the unique agony of being kicked in the testicles. Which, he'd just decided, he'd easily choose now over a few more hours of watching Molly suffer, and not being able to do anything in response but make her drink water and beg her to sleep.

"Okay, well," he said. "If you decide you know, you're going to tell me, right?" _Because, of course, I can do lots of things to help with that._

John Watson's world revolved around thinking up and executing various ways to help. See a problem, solve a problem. Emergency medicine was one of the most task-based professions he could have chosen; except, perhaps, the business of solving crimes. This, on the other hand, was an exercise in embracing helplessness. King Canute commanding back the tide.

He got up to make another cup of coffee for himself, resisting the urge to ask Molly for the fifth time if she wanted more water. He was busy with the coffee and had his back turned to her when he heard a rustle of blankets and the squeak of the bedframe. He turned around.

"Hey," he said, putting the cup down and going over to her. "What's-"

"I need to go to the toilet," she said urgently, voice thick with impending tears.

"I really don't want you to get up, Molly, if you can just-"

"No, I'm _wet_ , I think I wet myself…"

In one swift movement, John riffed the blankets off her to have a look for himself. A silence, punctuated only by the sounds of Molly's breathing.

"Oh, God," he said. "You're wet. And that's… that's not urine."


	10. Sentimental Nonsense

_Need you to go up to our room and look after Charlie now_

_\- Today 5:18am_

* * *

 

Sherlock stopped dead in the middle of the corridor, staring at the phone in his hand. His pulse had left all its usual spots, and was now located in his throat.

This was a text that John didn't want an answer to, of that Sherlock felt sure. At least, he didn't want any answer that wasn't:

* * *

 

_Going right now. Give my love to Molly. - S_

_\- Today 5:19am_

* * *

 

Guilt pulled at Sherlock as he made his way toward the nearest staircase. Well, what exactly did Lestrade want from him? Was he supposed to help John and Molly, or keep out of the way and do nothing? Besides, Lestrade had vastly overestimated how high he actually was right now. The last of his stash had been weak, cheap street drugs acquired via the Homeless Network at the last second, and his high had dwindled into nothing almost immediately. At least, that's what it had felt like.

If everyone thought him competent enough to solve crimes while in this state, then surely he was capable of caring for a toddler. One who was probably asleep at this early hour, anyhow.

The second and third floors of Arndale Hall consisted, it seemed, of a series of interconnecting and almost identical corridors, but Sherlock had no trouble working his way back to John and Molly's assigned bedroom. He tapped on the door with two battered fingers, immediately hearing a surprised little rustle of bedclothes behind it.

"Jake?"

Sherlock conquered the urge to explain to Hayley the differences in the way a trained police officer and a graduate chemist knocked on a door. Instead, he simply said, "It's Sherlock. Can I come in?"

"Just a second."

Neither did he indulge in any speculation as to what Hayley had been expecting from a visit from Jake, instead waiting politely while she gathered herself into a fit state of dress to open the door. Judging from her puffy face and the hollows under her eyes, she'd either been asleep or trying to keep herself awake. More than likely the latter, even though Charlie, confined to a strange cot and without her parents and entertainments from home, had fallen asleep again. The little girl twitched as Sherlock shut the door behind himself, but did not wake.

"Hi," Hayley said, barely above a whisper. "What's going on?"

"I've come to look after Charlie."

She blinked. "You?"

"Yes, me," he said, annoyed. "I'd have thought you'd be more grateful for the break. John asked me to do it more than a month ago, though I think he planned for us to be at Baker Street at the time."

She looked at him as the penny dropped. "Oh, shit."

"That seems to be the prevailing opinion, yes." Then, in different tones, "Did you know, you do that _exactly_ like your father?"

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Sherlock was tempted to ask Hayley to stay with him. He had a vague notion, and he'd had it from the day John had asked him to babysit Charlie, that the process should be supervised by a female person. He remembered how much John had relied on Mrs. Hudson and Harry to help out with Charlie in her first six months, even though neither had bore a child herself and couldn't logically be expected to know any more about childcare than a childless man.

"No," he finally said, looking Hayley over carefully. "No, I think you're probably best employed in sleeping for the time being." He'd just observed something about her; something he hadn't expected. Something that then connected with another observation and crashed into a deduction that left him open-mouthed for a second.

Of course, it was possible, just, that he was wrong. But the more he considered it, the more perfectly obvious it seemed that…

"I'd feel a bit crap for sleeping when everyone else is running around like headless chickens," Hayley was saying, apparently oblivious. "I might go find Dad…"

"He's busy," Sherlock said. The last thing he wanted was for Hayley to immediately find her father and explain that he'd just relieved her of babysitting duty.

She raised one eyebrow. _"Busy?"_

"I meant 'ill'," he said, then followed up swiftly with, "Melissa and her mother are in my bedroom. Perhaps they'd like to see you."

"Perhaps." She yawned into one hand. "Okay. Thanks for getting me out of this, Sherlock. I don't know which is worse, her being boring when she's asleep or her being a little bit too interesting when she's awake."

"Oh, I'm sure you know my views on that," he said. Although he still had a habit of lamenting "boring" whenever the world around him seemed too tedious for words, he'd never expected infants to be entertaining. And the more passive Charlie was, the more he'd be able to sit and think about the Hayden murder.

Hayley had been sitting on the bed putting her shoes on, and stood up. Before she could leave, though, Sherlock gently touched her wrist. "Hayley…"

She stopped, looking confused; and he wondered if it was the first time he'd ever actually touched her.

"I'm so sorry," he faltered. "About-"

"Don't, Sherlock." She shook her head and, with her free hand, gently brushed him off. "Don't do your thing on me right now."

"Is there anything—"

"Yes," she said. "Yeah, there is. You can stop it with your deductions, and you can definitely keep your mouth shut about whatever you think you know. Thanks."

* * *

At twenty-five minutes past five, Greg finally emerged from the basement bathroom—he'd collected some interesting ideas for renovating his home bathroom on this trip, if nothing else. He made his way to the second-floor room Sherlock had offered to Melissa and tapped on the door. After a second or two, Liz answered, slipping past him into the corridor with a mouthed _taking a break._ He found Melissa on the bed rather than in the bathroom, which was an improvement on how they'd parted. He pulled a chair over as quietly as possible, assuming she was asleep, but as he sat down she stirred.

"Hey," he said. "How're you feeling?"

"Bloody awful," she mumbled, stretching her arms out like a cat.

"At least the only way from there is up," he said to her, mentally adding on _for us, anyway,_ and brushing aside the thoughts of how Molly was faring. Nothing he could do about that except what he always did: be useful where he could be, stay out of the way where he couldn't be. "This, Mrs. Lestrade, is the extremely romantic first day of our married life together."

"Oh, Greg, you lug. You know I'm ridiculously happy, right?"

He blinked. "Really? In that case, I've never seen someone enjoy food poisoning so much."

"Well, maybe I'd be even happier _without_ the food poisoning." She moved aside a little, patting the mattress next to her. Unable to think of a good reason why he shouldn't, he lay down beside her, shoes and all, head resting on her shoulder. She traced over his cheek with one finger.

"I just kind of left you here," he said. "Shouldn't have done that."

"You know I usually want to be left alone to sleep when I'm sick," she said. "And every time I wake up, I think, 'yeah, that's _my_ husband—being awesome, off solving a crime.'"

"I'm not solving it fast enough," he admitted.

"Well, it's not like Elizabeth's on your case telling you to hurry it up," she said.

He frowned, reaching over to put his hand against her forehead.

"Deliriously happy, Greg." She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he noted with concern how hot and damp they felt on his skin. "How's Molly?" she asked at length.

Lestrade had received a text from John on his way up the stairs; a FYI, rather than a request for help. "About to have those twins, apparently," he said.

"Well, she's… wait, you mean _about_ -about?" She made a movement as if she was trying to sit up. "I should go help," she said.

"No, you shouldn't," he said. "Lie down. The last thing they need is you in there, throwing up and passing out and spreading germs from one end of the room to the other. It's not like you're a wealth of experience in that department, anyway."

"Bastard," she mumbled, giving up for the time being and closing her eyes. "But seriously, is someone giving them a hand?"

"Yeah, of course," he said automatically. But on thinking about it, he hadn't the faintest idea who. All he hoped was that Sherlock would stay out of the way long enough to come down, before John noticed at the worst possible time.

* * *

No sooner had the door closed behind Hayley, and Sherlock had taken a deep breath—definitely coming down, more sober than not, he decided—than Charlie stirred in her crib, rolling over and pulling herself into a sitting position. Her ash-blonde curls fluffed around her head like a halo. But Sherlock knew Charlotte Watson well enough by now to realise those curls were, if anything, hiding devil's horns; and he loved her all the better for it.

"Mummy," she said sleepily, rubbing her eyes with her chubby fists.

"Not quite," he replied. After the Watson's had moved into the flat downstairs, he'd read up as much as possible on child development, expecting it would come in handy at some point. One conclusion he'd come to was that it stunted a child's communication skills to be constantly addressed with baby talk. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Charlotte, but your mother's quite indisposed at the moment."

Although Charlie hadn't the faintest clue what the word 'indisposed' meant, she'd just woken expecting to be comforted by one of her parents and found herself in a strange bedroom with Uncle Sherlock instead. Her bottom lip wobbled, then dropped, and she burst into tears. "Mum-MEEEEE!"

 _Oh, my God,_ Sherlock thought. _What do I do…?_

He wrinkled his nose as the first thing he needed to do with Charlie quickly became obvious. Well, he conceded, lifting her out of her cradle and looking around for where Molly had put her bag of nappies and other baby-related paraphernalia. At least this was a _practical_ endeavour. Even John managed to change nappies several times a day. This Sherlock Holmes could do, with an underlying little satisfaction that he was doing _exactly_ as John asked him.

* * *

John was staring out the window again, though there wasn't anything out there he hadn't seen before: darkness and a flurry of snow that occasionally thudded against the pane. It did seem to be dwindling, though, or perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Behind him, Molly was on her feet and clinging unsteadily to the back of one of the armchairs.

"It's okay, Lolly," he said, going to her side and fanning her face with some copies of the witness statements Greg had insisted everybody write down earlier. "It's fine. Everything's fine."

It was times like this he was _so_ glad he'd spent six years studying medicine, he thought: so he could keep repeating _it's fine, everything's fine_ at his wife while she was suffering, and otherwise be of no medical use to her at all. He'd almost have preferred Molly to have a broken arm. At least he could help with that kind of thing.

"I know it's fine," was all Molly said. She grabbed at a nearby towel and heaved sharply into it, though he could tell nothing had come up, judging from the way she then used it to wipe sweat off her temples once she'd come up for air again.

"Anyway," he said, trying to stay cheerful. "Charlie took ages to be born; what, nine hours..?"

"Twenty."

His eyebrows shot up. _"Twenty?"_

"Remember, I went to the hospital the night before… they sent me home…"

"Well, twenty's even better," he said.

She gave him a Look, and he backtracked in confusion. That had definitely not come out the way he'd intended. "I mean," he said, "that's plenty of time to get to a hospital. If the storm dies down like Mycroft said it will, you'll be in St. Jimmy's in Leeds around nine o'clock. Maybe a bit past." He glanced at his watch. Quarter to six, give or take a minute or two.

"What if Mycroft's wrong?"

He looked at her as if she'd asked him what would happen if the sun froze over. "He's _Mycroft Holmes,"_ he said. "I've never known him to be wrong about anything… Molly-"

"Oh, God," she got out, fingers clawing into the back of the armchair. "Please, talk to me… keep talking to me, okay…"

"Just try to relax, it's going to be-"

"About literally _anything else but this, John!"_

"Okay, all right…" John picked up the papers to fan her face again, turning them over at the last second for a source of conversation that wasn't the impending premature birth of his children. "Okay," he said again. "So Donovan's just busted the alibi the Hayden brothers and Ishani Parikh gave, she says they weren't playing poker; Alec and Ishani were having sex in her room on the third floor, and Stewart can't explain where he was, and he keeps changing his story..."

"Maybe he did it..."

"Yeah, but how could he, when everyone could see he was in the doorway when it was broken open? So let's think this one out then: There was nobody in the Hayden's room when Greg came in, except Elizabeth and the people he'd seen ahead of him that he mentions here in the statement: Maureen, Stewart, Alec, and that Allison Marr woman."

Privately, John had already put Allison Marr on his list of suspects, even though everybody else seemed to regard her as being above suspicion. To him, this was exactly a reason to still suspect her. If Sherlock had been around to hear his thoughts on the subject, he'd have told him he'd watched too many TV crime dramas.

"Maybe he's… got an identical twin," Molly suggested, clawing at the back of the sofa again and taking a deep, shuddering breath.

"Molly-"

"Keep talking…"

"So," John went on, a little feverishly. "So, well, he _might_ have a twin, but why would Stewart's secret identical twin that nobody knows about want to kill Elizabeth Hayden on her wedding night?"

"For God's sake, John, I don't _know…"_

John decided not to point out that he was only doing what she'd asked him to. "Um," he said, trying to look back down at the papers in his hand. "So the way I see it is, there's three options. Either the killer had already left the locked room when everyone arrived in it. Or the killer hadn't left the locked room and was still there when Greg and everyone else arrived, and left afterwards. Or the killer's invisible."

"That's still option two," she reminded him crabbily, dropping her shoulders and beginning to exhale deeply. "And you left out… suicide, a projectile, a pursuit, the body being dumped…"

"Are you gunning for any of those?" he asked her.

Molly shook her head. "No," she said. "Nowhere to fire a projectile from. Nowhere for a dying woman to hide a weapon. No blood trail to indicate she was chased into the room. She was killed where she lay and stabbed from the front…" She swiped at her face with the towel again and dry-retched into it.

"So she was facing whoever did it," he said, valiantly trying to ignore this.

"Mmm." Molly nodded, folded the towel and pressed it to her face again. "And not struggling. Not for the first stab, anyhow. Someone came to talk to her…"

* * *

Sherlock had found some milk biscuits in Charlie's case, given her one and taken another for himself, to toast the fact that they'd both just survived The Adventure of the Dirty Nappy without either of them crying or spreading the mess from one end of the room to the other. Charlie had by now accepted that she was on this adventure with Uncle Sherlock and refused to be put down, so he was pacing around the bedroom with her in his arms, jiggling her occasionally when she became too restless or heavy. "Enlighten me," he said. "At what age can I expect you to stop defecating in your clothing?"

Charlie, sucking enthusiastically on her biscuit, made no reply. With her slung low over his hip, Sherlock's arms were getting tired. Reasoning that the bed was a safe enough place for her, he put her down on it. Immediately, she dropped her biscuit on the mattress and reached back up for him with both arms.

"No," she wailed. "No, Sherwee!"

… Sherwee?

Oh, no. That was _never_ going to do. Growing up with the name _Sherlock Holmes_ had guaranteed him years of school bullying, even among schoolmates with names like _Orlando Montgomery Talbot_ and _Alasdair Wainthorpe the Third, Lord Dalhurst._ But, though he'd not been consulted before it had been given, his name _was_ Sherlock Holmes and nothing else, and not even infancy was an excuse for that kind of twee mangling of a perfectly respectable name.

"Okay." He scooped her up, sitting down on the bed with her on his knees, facing him. "Settle in, Charlie, and concentrate. We're going to play a game. Do as I do: _Sher-lock_ ," he said, overenunciating the syllables and pointing to his chest.

Charlie, confusion in her big brown eyes, pointed to her own chest.

"No; almost, but not quite." He gently pulled her hand toward him and rested her sticky fingers on his shirt. "Sherlock. _I'm_ Sherlock. Can you say _Sher-_ lock?"

"Sherwee!" she giggled, clapping.

"No," Sherlock said, shifting her weight on his knee. Part of her biscuit was in danger of falling onto his lap with a mushy thud, and for a second he had an impulse to break off the soggy part and put it in his own mouth, as he'd seen John do to spare the carpet or his jeans. The odd thing, though, was that he'd always thought it disgusting when John did it. "We're not having any cute nicknames between us anymore, Charlotte Mary Watson," he said. " _Sher_ -lock."

"Sherwee," she said stubbornly.

Despite knowing full well that, at seventeen months, Charlie wasn't old enough to be doing this to annoy him, Sherlock still had to wonder for a second. This was _exactly_ the way Molly got her own way in a conflict, and John had started to copy her. Just say the same thing over and over again until the person you're debating with gives up.

"Sherlock," he persisted; noting, with something that strongly resembled affection, that Charlie and John pulled the same faces when they were deep in thought.

"Sher…" she fumbled. "Sher…"

He waited.

"Sher…wee...?"

"Oh, for God's _sake_." Sherlock put his head in his hands and lowered it—a little too dramatically, as he found out when his forehead came into sharp contact with Charlie's.

He gasped and cradled the back of her head; exactly, if John or Molly had been on hand to tell him, the wrong reaction. "Oh, God," he said aloud. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I-"

Initially, the unexpected Glasgow kiss had merely made Charlie alarmed. At this, though, she immediately melted into more tears.

"No-no-no," Sherlock begged, checking the bump on her forehead—virtually non-existent—and standing up, walking around the room with her, giving her a few energetic bounces. "No, stop; please, stop. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you. What do you want? Do you want a…"

His mind filtered through the various options at supersonic speed. _Drink?_ She'd just had one. _Biscuit?_ Likewise. _Toy?_ What if she demanded one that was sitting back at the Baker Street flat…?

"…Song?" he heard himself finish.

Charlie stopped, as abruptly as if he'd turned her tears off with a switch, and Sherlock inwardly groaned. Molly occasionally sang for Charlie, so she knew the word 'song' and she wanted one, apparently on the spot. Sherlock wasn't afraid of his vocal skills being judged by someone who wasn't even toilet trained yet, but the immediate problem was that he couldn't think of a single thing that was appropriate. There was a nursery rhyme about a spider that Charlie liked, he knew; but just at that moment, he couldn't recall a word of it and only had a vague idea of the tune.

"Song?" Charlie prompted him. "Sherwee _song?"_

Well, on consideration, there was _one_ that he'd liked as a child. He had no recollection of who had taught it to him; no memory of his mother ever singing anything at all, and Mycroft was hardly going to indulge his baby brother in sentimental nonsense. Sherlock wouldn't normally have lowered himself either, but with Charlie now insisting "Song! Song!" and liable to start screaming if one didn't begin soon, he hitched her up on his hip again, trying to remember the words:

_O, there was a lofty ship and she sailed upon the sea,_

_And the name of that ship it was the Golden Vanity_

_And she feared she would be taken by the Turkish enemy_

_As she sailed upon the lowland, lowland low_

_She sailed upon the lowland sea._

_Then up stepped the cabin boy, just the age of twelve and three…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading. The ballad Sherlock sings to Charlie is called 'The Sweet Trinity' or 'The Golden Vanity'. It's one of the Child Ballads, traditional, and so the lyrics are completely in the public domain. It's a sordid little song about war, piracy, terrorism, murder and implied incest. I think child!Sherlock would have liked it. There's a particularly good version on Youtube by a trio called Three Together.


	11. Colleagues

* * *

Jake Dyer dropped into the plastic chair he'd placed just outside the reception hall doors and glanced at his watch. Nine minutes to six in the morning, running on an hour and a half of sleep, and he was back to babysitting the disgruntled guests of the Ross-Hayden wedding. For the first two hours, the guests had been mostly in shock, and shocked people tended to be compliant with authority figures like the police. But Dyer was all-too-aware that he hardly cut it as a convincing authority figure yet, especially since he was still wearing the first thing he'd thrown on to cover up the boxers he'd come downstairs in: a pair of faded black tracks and a Star Wars t-shirt. (At least, he thought to himself, he'd decided not to pack the t-shirt with _I've Got a Dig Bick_ emblazoned on it for a nice weekend wedding with the in-laws.)

If there was a murderer somewhere among the wedding guests clumped together in disgruntled little groups about the room, he had no idea who it was. Killers didn't come with labels; and with most of the guests showing very little emotion, it was hard to gauge how much they knew about what had happened. For some it was obviously shock, and for others it was obviously indifference. Elizabeth's parents were the former. The mother, Maureen, had been crying into her husband's chest earlier but had subsided, though she still gave the impression she was liable to start up again at any second. Stewart and Alec Hayden were sitting near the back of the hall, as far away from Dyer as they could manage without actually hiding. They seemed to be occasional conference with one another, but Dyer was wary of trying to get too close and raising their suspicions. Warren and Janet Hayden, their parents, were in one corner hovering over the coffee urn. Dyer thought he'd like to speak to Warren Hayden, the living embodiment of the Scottish stereotype: stocky, florid and barrel-chested, with grey hair still showing the odd streak of bright red he'd passed on to both his sons. His wife seemed less interesting: bottle blonde, well made-up, with a great deal of large and tacky gold jewelry. She had so many rings on her hands it was a wonder she could move her fingers at all.

He was just wondering whether to text Hayley again when one of the doors opened at the far end of the corridor and Sally Donovan emerged from it, herding Ishani ahead of her. Both women looked grim-faced. Donovan stopped by his chair and they watched Ishani go into the crowded hall, sitting down with a group of the late Elizabeth Hayden's work colleagues a split-second before Donovan let the door close behind them.

"So the thing is," she said to Dyer without preamble. "Technically, Lestrade's in charge of this case and Sherlock's helping him. But I'm thinking it's down to just us right now, with Lestrade sick as a dog and Sherlock assaulting the kitchen staff and all."

Dyer touched the bruise over his right cheek where Sherlock had punched him. "You didn't need to call in the cavalry," he reproached her. "I had it all in hand."

"He hit you."

"He wasn't really hitting me though, was he. Just hitting whatever was in the way of him hitting Azad Bayar."

Donovan raised one eyebrow. "And you sound like you're okay with that."

"He was worried about his friends. It happens. Anyway, where's Lestrade now?" he asked, pulling a small spiral notebook out of the pocket of his tracks and handing it over to her.

"In bed and staying there, I hope." Donovan, flipping the notebook open, spoke absently. "He looks bloody awful. What's this?"

"While you were with Ishani, I took down the names, dates of birth, phone numbers and addresses of every guest I could find, as well as their relation to the bride," he said. "Just in case we need it later. And I had a quick look at everyone's hands: nothing I saw in the way of blood, defensive scratches, any of that."

"In all the confusion after the door was opened," Donovan said, "anyone with blood on their hands could have rushed out to wash them. Much harder to get it off clothes."

"I thought that too," he said. "But I couldn't find any bloodstains on anyone's clothes, either."

"How carefully did you look?"

"Not very. Just whatever was visible without touching—I don't have legal clearance to start manhandling people."

"And even if you did, you wouldn't be able to get around to everyone on your own."

"And even if I _could_ , we don't have an existing inventory of what everyone claimed to be wearing at the time of the murder, we don't have any way of keeping track of what they're wearing now, and we've got no way of telling if any bloodstained clothing is actually missing unless it turns up again."

" _And_ _that's_ assuming," Donovan said, "that anyone who stabbed Elizabeth would have blood on them to begin with. Both Molly and John said she didn't bleed very much."

"All the killer had to do was slip out of the way, hands in pockets, and wash them in the bathroom sink with plain old liquid soap. Done." Dyer looked troubled. "Except Lestrade said he didn't see a soul leaving that room, and I've got to believe him. He's been a police officer since before I was born. I don't think he'd make a mistake or not notice something that basic."

Donovan gave a little groan of frustration. Easy as anything to get a forensic tech to check every sink in the building with luminol and UV light; but they didn't currently have a forensic tech, luminol, or a UV lightstick. "How the hell," she said, "did anyone ever solve crimes a hundred years ago?"

"They didn't," Jake reminded her. "Well, not enough of them, anyway. Unless they caught you in the act or you confessed. I don't think either of those are likely to happen for us right now. Otherwise, I suppose they just picked the most likely suspect and tried on a load of theories until one worked for them. So much for presumption of innocence. I'd say a lot of people went away for things they didn't do." Then, on a slightly more cheerful note, he asked, "How did you go with Ishani?"

"Once I scared her into thinking I was about to tell the whole world she's sleeping with Alec Hayden," she said, "all I got after that was story after story about what a bitch Elizabeth Hayden was."

He blinked. "Weren't they best friends?"

"Oh, yeah, apparently. If you want my opinion, Ishani's a bitch as well. I went to school with girls like that—twisted the arms of the boys to get their attention, backstabbed the other girls, and all that."

"Teenage girls are savage. They're a bit old for that crap now, though, aren't they?"

"Some people are never too old for that crap."

Dyer shrugged. The deeper points of the female psyche really wasn't his area of expertise.

* * *

Babies were easily the most irrational creatures on earth. Even dogs and horses behaved with more predictability. But Sherlock had hoped that John and Molly's daughter would be a little above average in all things, including conforming to some sort of logical progression of thought and behaviour. No such luck.

By twenty past six, Charlie appeared to have no idea what she wanted, and that, Sherlock thought, made two of them. She demanded "song", and then cried when he started to sing again. She rubbed sleepily at her eyes but refused to let him bundle her up in her blanket, the way Molly and John did, to settle her to sleep. She seemed hungry—it had, after all, been eleven hours since her last decent meal—but even the biscuits weren't distracting her any more, except as a way of decorating the carpet. He'd given her a bottle, and she'd thrown it at the wall so hard it had taken paint off the stonework.

"I already knew your parents were the most patient people on earth," Sherlock muttered, trying to keep a grip on her as she struggled to be put down. He'd already _tried_ putting her down; she'd immediately screamed to be picked up again. "But now, Charlotte, I think they should be decorated for not abandoning you in the woods somewhere to fend for yourself."

"Mum-meeeee," Charlie whimpered.

This was on Sherlock's mind as well. John was attentive in the extreme when someone else was looking after his daughter. When the two of them were out on a case and he had the slightest amount of down time, he was constantly on his phone to whoever was caring for her, asking how she was, demanding updates on her every activity. But for half an hour, Sherlock's phone had sat on the desk across the room, silent and dark.

Although Sherlock could still hear the low murmur of a hundred voices collected downstairs, the third floor seemed empty; an eerie, fluorescent stillness of the hours before dawn. He stood in the open doorway, Charlie in his arms, contemplating whether he should ring Hayley and ask her to come back, when he heard the distinct sound of rubber-soled shoes clanging on the metallic staircase at the end of the hall. He did not have long to wait before Allison Marr reached the top of them and came into view.

Lestrade's earlier assessment of her as a tiny blonde girl had been entirely accurate, and there didn't seem to be much more to her than that. She wore her hair pulled back neatly, or tried to, but it had begun to escape its ponytail and hung in damp wisps on her neck. A plain woman, with a pale, rabbitty look about her, all mouth, small eyes. She wore no makeup, which at first glance made her look very young; but judging from the lines on her neck and hands, she was in her early thirties at least.

Those hands were interesting. They were very, very interesting.

"Excuse me," he said as she almost reached the doorway, and she stopped and turned to him, practically radiating wholesome industry.

"Can I help?" she asked in an unexpectedly clear voice.

"I hope so. It's the baby," Sherlock said ruefully, giving in and putting Charlie down. She slunk behind him, burying her face in the back of his legs. "She's hungry, but the only thing I've got up here are biscuits, and Detective Inspector Lestrade wants me to stay here. Could I have something brought up for her?"

"Sure," Allison said, glancing at her watch. "We serve breakfast at seven, but I'm sure there's something around so that the little one doesn't have to wait. Would you like some tea for yourself?"

Sherlock pulled a disgusted face. Tea. Was that a macabre joke? "Coffee. Black, two sugars. Thank you."

He watched her return along the corridor, deducing at lightning speed everything about Allison Marr that might be relevant to the case, from her shoes to her education to what side of the bed she slept on. Once she'd disappeared into the stairwell, he shook himself out of his reverie and turned back to the door—just in time to see it shut in his face with a thud.

Oh. Oh, _no._

But it was only a second's panic: the door had a slide bolt that was too high for Charlie to manage, not a traditional deadbolt that snicked when the door was closed. He gently pushed the door ajar. Charlie stuck her head out from behind it, brown eyes dancing, and burst into a fit of chuckles.

He smiled at her before he could help himself. "What are _you_ doing? Is this some sort of game, or something?"

Whatever it was, it was stopping Charlie from whining, so Sherlock was prepared to go along with it. He shut the door again, vigilant for little fingers where they shouldn't be, and for a few seconds there was total silence in the space between them. Then he opened the door again, as far as he had before. He found Charlie crouched behind it, giving away her hiding place by more uncontrollable giggling…

"Oh," he said suddenly, as the whole thing hit him. "Oh. Yes, that's a _very_ helpful point you've just made. Or caused me to make, which is even better. Conductor of light, indeed."

He reached over to the desk for his phone and scrolled through the address book to Jake Dyer's mobile number.

_Confirm or send on a copy of the statement Allison Marr gave earlier re: the time of the murder? — SH_

_\- Today 6:26am_

* * *

_Downloading…_

_\- Today 6:32am_

* * *

_Sorry I hit you. Meet me Room 13, third floor, fifteen minutes. Alone, obviously — SH_

_\- Today 6:34am_

* * *

"Excellent work, Watson," he said to Charlie, sitting down on the bed and pulling her into his lap as he looked over the photographed paper Dyer had sent through. "This might well be the beginning of a beautiful partnership—no…" Charlie grabbed for the phone, and he gently took it off her again. "I don't think any of the photographs on this phone are appropriate for children," he explained, pausing to remember half a dozen videos that definitely weren't. "And if we're to work together in the future, you _don't_ touch my phone without permission…"

Charlie, making another unsuccessful grab for Sherlock's phone, screamed and flapped her hands in frustrated rage.

"Oh, fine." Sherlock scrolled through his photo albums, locking the ones inappropriate for children, which really left only one. It was labelled _Charlotte._ He brought up the first picture in the series—one John had taken of Charlie when she'd been roughly forty minutes old, and sent on to Sherlock the day after her birth. "Who's that?" he asked her, surrendering the phone.

Charlie stopped screaming immediately, clutching the phone between her stubby fingers and studying the picture in silent fascination for a little while. "Baby," she finally said.

"Well, technically speaking… you did look rather… generic at that stage, I suppose…" Sherlock reached across for the phone, and she screamed again and tried to pull it away from him. "Oh, calm down, I'm showing you how these things work." He moved to the last photo in the series, a shot taken at the wedding the day before, and gave the phone back to her again. "Who's that?"

"Charlie!" she squealed, giving herself a round of applause for being so clever.

"Narcissist," Sherlock muttered, but he was smiling.

* * *

Allison Marr returned a few minutes later, carrying a tray laden with coffee, toast, cereal and fruit. Sherlock held the door open for her, admitting her into the room and carefully shutting it behind her.

"Hello again," she said brightly, laying the tray on the side desk near the door. Then, to Charlie, "Hello, darling. Is this your daddy?"

"No, thank small mercies," Sherlock said smilelessly. "Miss Marr, my colleague and I have just been experimenting with the door, which is almost identical to the one for the Haydens' honeymoon suite downstairs."

"Oh," she said blandly. "Yes?"

"In the statement you gave to Detective Constable Dyer, you said you were coming along the corridor just past three a.m. with a stack of fresh towels, and, passing the Haydens' room, you heard someone making a coughing or choking noise. You said you then tried the door, found it bolted, called out, failed to receive a response from inside and raised the alarm."

"That's right."

"No it isn't. It's a point of fact that the walls on this wing date from the sixteenth century. They're stone, no less than two feet deep in places, and completely soundproof to ordinary human noise. The doors are likewise far too sturdy for anyone passing by to hear someone in a room coughing or choking." He glanced at Charlie. "Or complaining about not having a phone."

"I don't understand," she said.

"Yes, I think you do. I checked with the roster of duties: there was no operational need for you to be carrying towels anywhere at the Hall at that hour of the night. It's a duty usually reserved for the morning staff. You came to the Haydens' room on _purpose_ , Miss Marr. You came to the room and you found it locked, and it wasn't _supposed_ to be locked, was it?"

By this time she had shrunk against the door jamb a little. "What?"

"John, of all people, pointed out how odd it was that Stewart Hayden was playing poker with his brother and his wife's best friend at 3am on the morning after his wedding," Sherlock continued, calmly taking a banana off the tray Allison had brought and peeling it. He handed it to Charlie, who aimed it for her mouth, mostly missed, and dropped half of it onto his trousers. "And," he went on, ignoring the mess, "Elizabeth Hayden was a highly demanding narcissist. Why would a woman accustomed to having her every whim indulged suddenly be accepting of her new husband abandoning the marriage bed at 3 am? Unless, of course, she deliberately arranged for him not to be there?"

"I don't know anything about that," Allison said, still backed up against the desk, though Sherlock hadn't moved from the bed.

"Really?" he asked. "Having known Elizabeth so well, you couldn't even… I don't know… hazard a guess for me?"

"I didn't-"

"Oamaru must be nice at this time of year."

Allison's glance darted toward the door, as if she was contemplating whether she could make a break for it; then they returned to Sherlock, who had lifted Charlie off his knee and put her on the mattress beside him, every muscle at ready.

She swallowed. "I've got no idea what you're talking about," she said.

"Oamaru," he repeated. "The largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand. I've never been, so I thought I'd ask someone who grew up there. Grew up with Elizabeth Hayden—or, as she was then, Elizabeth Ross."

"How did you-"

"Oh, please, your accent is _all over the place._ You can't decide if you're an Essex housewife or lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Elizabeth was better at it—but her identity papers indicated she'd also been living here for years, whereas the tan lines on your neck and wrists prove you've been in a summery climate up until a few weeks ago. Being very similar in age and socio-economic background, it's obvious you and Elizabeth went to school together. Good friends?"

Allison scoffed, dropping her shoulders. "Did you ever meet Elizabeth?"

"Yes."

"What did you think of her?"

"We weren't good friends. I don't have many of those, and from what I saw of her character, Elizabeth had even less and was working on having none."

"She was awful, Mr. Holmes—"

"Oh, you can talk. You came here to blackmail her." Sherlock brought his fingers to his lips for a second, as he sometimes did when his observations proved correct. "She seems more the blackmailing type, admittedly; but you came all the way from New Zealand and got a job at the place you knew Stewart and Elizabeth had chosen for their wedding reception. You've only been here a week… no, two weeks. The place served a four-course Christmas dinner twice on the twenty-fifth, and they would naturally want any staff to start at a time most useful to them. Before Christmas Eve. But it can't have been much longer than that, because of your hands."

She looked down at them. "What's wrong with my hands?"

"Nothing and everything. Nothing in that they're quite a standard, functional pair of hands. Everything, in that they aren't the hands of someone in domestic service. You're allergic to either dish liquid or laundry soap, probably the latter, considering you carry around the linen; the contact dermatitis on your palms is quite distinct. And then there's the calluses on your fingers—or rather, the calluses that aren't on your fingers. You'd never done manual work before in your life until two weeks ago. And yet here you and Elizabeth are, or rather were—on the other side of the world to where you first met. You followed her. Therefore, you were the threat to her. Come in, Dyer, I hate it when people skulk."

As she turned to the door, Allison's left hand struck the tray on the desk, upsetting Sherlock's cup of coffee onto the carpet. Sherlock pulled Charlie away from it and Allison gave a little squeal of alarm as the door behind her opened, admitting Jake Dyer into the room.

"What the hell's going on now?" he demanded, looking on the scene in complete bewilderment.

"Arrest this woman, constable," Sherlock said, standing up. "She murdered Elizabeth Hayden."


	12. Something Wrong

Hayley tapped on the door of the room that had originally been assigned to Sherlock, and stepped in when Melissa groggily invited her to do so. She found her new stepmother emerging, white-faced, from another trip to the bathroom, and her father apparently fast asleep on the bed, still in his clothes and shoes.

"Hi." Melissa held her hands up for a second to keep Hayley away. "Careful," she said. "Doctor Google says this is contagious."

"Lovely," Hayley said. "How long does it last for?"

"Roughly a week."

"Ouch." Hayley winced. "And you're supposed to be leaving for Italy on Thursday."

Melissa glanced down at Greg, still apparently asleep. "Don't," she warned quietly. "It's fine. Even if we have to postpone the honeymoon until we're both feeling better, it's fine."

"Oh, Mel," Hayley said. "I never thought I'd have to tell you this, but for Christ's sake, don't do what Mum did. I give you guys five years, _max_ , if you start that."

"And what exactly is 'that'?" Melissa asked her, one eyebrow poised.

"Being a martyr to Dad and his job. Yeah, okay, there'll be times when he has to work late. That happens to Jake and me, too. And there'll be times he'll be physically at home and mentally at work. Times he'll come home and be a complete zombie. Times he'll seriously let you down. But for God's sake, don't make it _normal."_

Melissa smiled wanly. "Words of wisdom from all the experience of nineteen."

"Yeah, well, I was there for the last fifteen years of Mum and Dad's marriage, and it was a trainwreck in slow motion, so I got a good look at just how they stuffed things up. I like you guys. I think you're adorable together, actually. So please don't bugger this up by letting Dad let you down until you hate him."

"He already feels bad about this, Hayley, and he's actually sicker than he's letting on." Melissa spoke gently. "Anyway, I'm not so desperate to travel on schedule that I want to get on a plane with vomiting and diarrhoea either. Whining to him about a holiday that we can easily postpone isn't going to help anything…"

At this, Lestrade stirred and rolled over, then opened his eyes, squinting in the light of the overhead globe. On seeing Hayley, he raised one hand to his forehead and started to sit up. "Hayley…?"

"Came to see how you and Mel are," she said, smiling. "I'm still trying to decide which of you looks worse, but you're ahead at the moment."

Lestrade took a few seconds to process what she'd just said, but his appearance didn't seem to be his chief concern just then. "So who's looking after the baby…?"

"Sherlock."

"Sherlock?"

Hayley nodded. "He came and said he was taking over, because John had asked him to when Molly had the twins."

"And you let him?"

"Sure. I had no reason not to… did I? I mean, okay, he's a lunatic, but he cares about Charlie, and he's smart enough to know how to look after her."

Lestrade covered his face with his hands for a second, then took a deep breath and struggled to his feet.

"No," Melissa ordered, pointing one finger at him for emphasis. "Don't you dare."

"I have to. Sorry," he said, reaching out and steadying himself on the bedside table for a second. "Just stay here. I'll only be ten minutes." He swallowed. "I might need some more water or something when I get back."

* * *

Jake Dyer was clinging to a single thought: _What Would Greg Do?_

Undoubtedly, Greg would listen to Sherlock. He would do as Sherlock asked. But he would _also_ demand a full explanation as to what the hell was going on, and with this in mind, Jake took Sherlock and Charlie out into the corridor, shutting Allison alone in the bedroom.

"You're not seriously asking me to lock this woman up, are you?" he asked.

"That's exactly what I'm asking you to do," Sherlock said, distractedly shifting Charlie on his hip. "She was blackmailing Elizabeth, and made an assignation with her for three a.m. It got out of hand and she ended up killing her. It should have been obviously from the start. In most cases, the person who finds the corpse and raises the alarm is either the murderer or the accessory."

Dyer puzzled this out. "Then how did she get in and out of the room? The bedroom wasn't just _locked_ , Sherlock, it was bolted from the inside so that she couldn't even get in using the key. They had to break it down."

"Who was the only person who said the key wouldn't work, Dyer? Allison. You don't actually believe everything other people tell you, do you?"

He made a face. "No, but," he said. "Sorry, there may well be something big I'm missing here, but this story of yours is bollocks, Sherlock. Firstly, that stuff about the person who finds the body being the one responsible. Not always. When the person who's murdered is attached, it's most likely to be their _spouse_ , actually. And it makes no sense to kill someone you're already blackmailing. If they're paying up, you don't want to kill the goose laying golden eggs. If they don't pay up, you make their life a misery, sure, but you don't _kill_ them. Blackmail is about money, not murder."

"This time it's about murder."

"What was Allison blackmailing her for, anyway? I mean, come on, this isn't an episode of Midsomer bloody Murders. Who's got a secret big enough that they can be blackmailed over it?"

"Go and find out." Sherlock, shifting Charlie again, waved a dimissive hand at him.

"Find out _where?"_

"Elizabeth Ross was a court-issued assumed name. There's your head start, constable."

"And," Dyer continued, ignoring this little jab, "all right, I'll grant you that whoever killed Elizabeth was someone she knew, or at least someone she expected—she let them into her hotel room in the middle of the night when she was in her nightie, and there was almost no sign of a struggle. And that's the thing. Elizabeth was five feet eleven inches tall, Sherlock, and sturdy across the shoulders. Allison would barely come up to her shoulder, and a strong breeze would blow her over. Two stab wounds. For the first one, Elizabeth wasn't even struggling. For the second, she _barely_ struggled. There's no way Elizabeth wouldn't be able to fight off someone as small as Allison-"

"Sherlock, for God's _sake."_

With a profound sigh, Sherlock turned to see Lestrade had just rounded the corner and was making his way toward them as quickly as he was able. If Lestrade had dragged himself out of bed to seek him out, he was in for a particularly thorough bollocking, so he decided the best strategy would be to sit it out and try not to roll his eyes too many times.

"Oh, God, you're not," Lestrade was saying. "Tell me you're not seriously babysitting Charlie when you're off your-"

"John asked me to," Sherlock replied, in tones that implied he'd have assassinated the Queen if John had asked him to.

"Yeah, well, that's nice, but has John noticed you're in no state for it? You just attacked someone-"

"Because his laziness and poor business practice gave nearly a dozen people salmonella poisoning and caused a woman I care about to go into premature labour, not because of any… chemically induced factors..."

Dyer gave Lestrade a concerned glance. "Great. Losing my touch," he said. "I knew you were off your head, Sherlock, but I thought that was just the thrill of the chase, not you being actually high."

"I'm not high," Sherlock growled at him. "Was high. _Was_. Hours ago. I'll freely submit to any sobriety test you can devise… for God's sake, Lestrade, sit down..."

Lestrade, grey-faced, had just lost his balance and staggered. Sherlock grabbed him firmly by one arm and walked him a few feet further down the corridor, sitting him down into the nearest chair.

"I'm fine," Lestrade said, though he hadn't resisted sitting down at least. "Fine. Stop fussing."

"You're not fine." Sherlock pinched the back of Lestrade's hand, the way John had done to him once or twice. "You're dehydrated. Dyer, go and get him a glass of water."

Dyer, hovering nervously nearby with his arm's folded, gave Sherlock an incredulous look but did not move.

" _Now_ , constable."

Dyer met Lestrade's gaze, and the latter gave him a barely-perceptible nod. He went. And once Sherlock was sure he was out of earshot, he crouched down beside Lestrade's chair, setting Charlie on his knee. "Greg," he said. "How many years have you known me?"

"Ten." Lestrade paused. "Maybe eleven..."

"Eleven. And when have I ever asked you to do something for no reason? Or for a stupid reason?"

"Never," he said immediately.

"Never. So _please_ trust me when I say I need you to arrest Allison Marr for Elizabeth's murder."

Lestrade stared at him. "What, you think she d-"

"I tried to get Dyer to do it, but he's proving difficult."

"I'm not surprised. Allison Marr? Seriously? I wasn't even thinking of her as a serious suspect."

"I'm not surprised," Sherlock echoed, threatening to break out into a sarcastic sort of smile. "She's in the Watson's room now. Arrest her, lock her in one of the rooms, give me the keys for safekeeping, and tell Donovan and the wedding guests you've arrested her, they're safe, and you're not furthering your enquiries." He paused. "And then for God's sake, go back to bed and stay there."

"Sherlock, I can't name her to the other guests. There are laws against that kind of thing. Her lawyers-"

"This won't get as far as her lawyers."

"What do you mean, you want her arrested for murder but it won't get as far as her lawyers? If she's got mobile reception out here she'll be calling them before I've even finished reading her her rights. What the hell are you playing at?"

"You'd have worked that out already, if you weren't so ill," Sherlock remarked, sounding surprisingly gentle, for him. "Just know that _I_ know what I'm doing. I always do."

At this junction, Dyer returned with the water. Both he and Sherlock watched in some concern as Lestrade tried to choke it down. Sherlock shared the same observation Melissa had made, though he'd arrived at it from a different place: Lestrade was pretending to be much better than he actually was.

"What about this one?" Lestrade finally asked, reaching over to run one hand over Charlie's blonde curls.

"Again, I know what I'm doing," Sherlock repeated stubbornly, though this was more from principle than conviction. "I've cleaned her, fed her, played with her, and kept her from wandering off or getting injured," he went on, neatly omitting the incident where he'd accidentally headbutted her. "Is there anything else I should be doing that I'm apparently too high to have considered?"

Lestrade appeared to be giving this one some serious thought. "Nope," he finally muttered. "Think you've got the basics, unless you want to introduce her to Baby Mozart or something."

Classical music? Now that was a thought. Sherlock had sincere doubts as to whether John or Molly would have prioritised giving Charlie an early start in it…

"So, partly because I feel like death, I'm trusting you," Lestrade was saying. "Christ knows I'm probably going to live to regret it. But if you feel like you're not managing, for any reason, call someone, okay? Anyone. Hayley. Call Mel if you have to. God, I even think Donovan might be willing to give you a hand."

Sherlock, remembering that Lestrade had claimed Charlie as his niece that night, thought that if Donovan wasn't willing to give him a hand with her, Lestrade might 'convince' her to.

"I'm fine. We're fine." Sherlock checked over one shoulder that Dyer was not in earshot. In fact, Dyer had reached the spiral staircase by this time, without even asking Lestrade's leave to go. Practically confirmation that he was retrieving Donovan. "The next time Dyer is up for a pay upgrade or a promotion," he continued, "recommend him for it without reserve."

Lestrade blinked. "Really?"

"He's joined a list of only five detectives at Scotland Yard who aren't intolerably stupid."

"Oh. That's nice. He'll be pleased to hear that." Lestrade sipped his water. "Who are the other four…?"

"I'll leave you to speculate."

"And you know how good I am at speculating." Lestrade set his empty glass on the carpet beside his chair and got to his feet, making his way back down to the bedroom and occasionally grasping at the walls with his fingertips. Sherlock, still holding Charlie, followed. When Lestrade opened the door, they found Allison sitting at the desk, her face damp and swollen with tears.

"Allison," he said hoarsely. "I'm Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade from the Metropolitan police. Using the powers invested in me, I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Elizabeth Hayden-"

"No!" she exclaimed, spilling to her feet. "No, I-"

"You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken in evidence and may be used against you if you do not mention something you later rely on in court."

"Please, for God's _sake_ , detective-"

"You are entitled to legal representation, but good luck getting any under the current circumstances. For this reason, you will be detained under lock and key in one of the adjacent suites until such time as you are able to be interviewed in a police setting with access to legal representation. Do you understand what I've just said to you?"

"You don't seriously believe I killed her?" By this time, Sherlock thought, Allison was no longer sobbing and feeling sorry for herself: she was practically incandescent with outrage. "How could I have killed anybody, when-"

"Do you understand your rights and responsibilities, Allison?"

She dropped into the desk chair and covered her face with her hands, giving a strangled little sob. Finally, in a little voice, she said, "Yes. Yeah, I understand that you're a monumental-"

"Don't start on me," Lestrade said evenly. "I'm not in the mood, and whatever you were about to say, I promise I've been called it before. Come on, I'll need to find somewhere to put you. Look on the bright side. It'll be a lot more luxurious than a gaol cell."

* * *

For a long time, there had been silence between John and Molly, punctuated only by the sounds of Molly's breathing and the muffled fall of snow outside. Having apparently realised there wasn't a lot he could do immediately, John had settled into the armchair and started to doze. She let him for as long as possible.

"John?"

"Mmm?" He opened one eye and looked across at her.

"If you need to… make medical decisions for me today…"

"No," he said, getting to his feet and going over to her. "Stop with that. You'll be making your own medical decisions-"

"For God's sake, John, will you please stop trying to shut me up by lying to me and just be _realistic_ about this?" she snapped, taking a sharp, shaky breath. "I'm eight weeks from my due date, one twin is breech, I have salmonella poisoning, I'm dehydrated and I'm _tired,_ John. I think we can safely say that this will be a caesarean and I _may not be able to give my own consent..."_

Pain stabbed into her lower back like the thrust of a screwdriver, so vicious it sent all the feeling out of her legs. She cut herself off, grabbing for the first thing available, which was John's arm. Nausea shot into her throat and before she could stop it, she heaved half a glass of water onto the carpet.

"Okay," John was saying, one hand on the small of her back.

"Carpet-"

"Yeah, I can see. It's just water. I'll clean it up. Calm down, Molly, just breathe…"

And he could definitely cut it out with that 'breathe' nonsense, too, she thought once she was halfway coherent again. _Breathe?_ Patronising prick… For three of the longest seconds of her life, the only reason she hadn't screamed Arndale Hall down was because she _couldn't_ breathe.

"Molly," she heard next, and John's tone was a lot quieter. "Is there something… something else you're not telling me?"

She winced. John could be dense, yet zero in on her with devastating accuracy at other times. On top of that, she genuinely didn't know how to answer his question without putting something between them that would make them both panic: something wasn't right. "Do whatever you can for the twins, John," was all she could trust herself to say. "Whatever's best for them…"

"Of course," he said, duly offended that she'd suggest he do anything else. Apparently deciding it was safe to leave her side, he went over to the linen cupboard for another towel. "Don't worry about that. Task at hand, and all that."

The problem was, she was already sick of concentrating on the task at hand and the niggling doubts that were starting to pluck at her. In the next few minutes of silence, she firmly dragged her thoughts back to the murder of Elizabeth Hayden. The sad—no, _tragic_ , it had been her wedding day—murder of Elizabeth Hayden. The sad, tragic, _deliciously interesting_ locked-room murder of Elizabeth Hayden. The one John was missing out on investigating, because he was with her, cleaning regurgitated water off the carpet.

"I'm so sorry, John."

"Hmm?" he glanced up at her.

"There's this lovely crime, this perfect locked-room murder, and you're sitting up here with me, missing it," she said. "You must be so bored."

John stood up, one foot against the towel he'd laid on the carpet. "Listen," he said, reaching for her hand. "While we're here chatting and it's just us, I want to get a couple of things straight. I'm feeling a lot of things right now, and I'll say it, I'm not enjoying all of them. But the one thing I'm definitely _not_ feeling right now is bored, Lolly."

"I didn't just mean right now," she said.

He blinked. "Sorry," he blurted out. "Are you implying I'm bored _with you?_ No. _No,_ Molly. Never, not even once. I still can't believe my taste in women—and good luck. Never been so grateful to get Sherlock's leavings."

"John."

"Okay, I might have put that poorly," he said, but he looked impish, so she doubted it was a slip of the tongue. "I mean it, though. I haven't forgotten I wasn't the one you wanted."

"John _Watson!"_

 _"I wasn't._ You have to admit it: if Sherlock had been more keen, you'd probably still be struggling to remember my name these days. _I'll_ admit it, because four years and three kids later, it doesn't matter. Every day, Molly, every _single day,_ I wake up and see you and realise that in a way that actually _matters_ , I'm smarter than Sherlock Holmes. And that's why I'll never care too much when he calls me an idiot. He can keep his 94 classifications of natural fibres, categorised by texture, smell and taste."

"John, I'm so sorry I lied to you…"

He looked surprised. "You lied to me about what?" he asked, still trying to be playful, but with a little tremor of anxiety underneath.

"About Sherlock being dead all that time. It's the worst thing I've ever done to you."

"Oh. Um." John fell silent, and for a few seconds she listened to her own breathing. Not a great time for them to be revisiting this conversation, and she knew it, but… she batted away the niggling thought that had just returned full-force. Something didn't feel right. "Well, if that's the worst you've ever done to me, at least I know about it and we've got past it," he finally said. "But I think we should maybe give this kind of talk a rest for now, Lolly."

"You don't want to talk about it?"

"I don't want to talk about it _right now_. And I don't think we need to. You're giving birth to my children, not bleeding to death in my arms."

She tried to smile. "Well," she said. "If I had to bleed to death in anybody's arms, I suppose I'd pick yours."

"You _suppose?"_ But John looked impish again. "Okay," he said. "I'll take that as a compliment."


	13. Flushed

"Okay," Lestrade said as he locked the door of room ten behind Allison Marr and leaned against it for a second. "I don't like her being where I can't see her," he went on. "I mean, I doubt she'll be able to clamber out the window or anything, but the room isn't secure of self-harm implements. And she's a walking suicide risk."

Sherlock thought, with an odd pang that felt a little like guilt, that Lestrade had accumulated plenty of good reasons not to risk a suspect committing suicide under his watch. He tapped him lightly on the shoulder and held his hand out for the key.

"What do you want me to do now?" Lestrade asked him, handing it over as if it wasn't worth arguing the point.

"Go to bed. You're a liability when you can't stay on your feet for five minutes, or remember the wording of a caution you must have used thousands of times."

"I love you too. I'm hard pressed to remember my own name right now, Sherlock, but you and I both know it makes no difference how she's cautioned, or even if she's cautioned." Lestrade rubbed his tired eyes. "If you're not worried about her calling a lawyer and suing the living daylights out of the Met, I'm not either."

Sherlock rewarded this with the ghost of a smile. "If only Dyer had that kind of clarity," he said.

"Thought you said he was one of five Met detectives who wasn't an idiot."

"He is. But he lacks clarity."

"The clarity of knowing when to shut up and do whatever you tell him, basically?"

"Basically."

Lestrade scrubbed one hand over his haggard face again. "Just so I've got this straight: are we protecting her," he asked more quietly, "or flushing someone else out?"

"Both. Or rather, I'm doing both, and you're doing neither," Sherlock reminded him. "Dyer's accidentally presented himself as Allison's champion, and, even better, he's probably the healthiest person in the building. I suggest you send him in to ask her about her relationship with Elizabeth Ross. Or rather, with Alicia Torrens, which was Elizabeth's real name… oh, please, feel free _not_ to interrupt by asking me how I knew that; you know perfectly well I'm about to tell you." He glanced down at Charlie, as if questioning for a second whether he should proceed with the details in front of her. "In 1995, when Torrens was eleven," he began, "she drowned her six-year-old brother in a river. She spent the following seven years in a juvenile correctional facility. When she turned eighteen she was assessed as sane and fully rehabilitated, and she was released in 2002. She moved to the UK in 2006 with her new identity and found work with the Leeds branch of the Southern Cross Bank."

"For God's sake, Sherlock, you better not have got that information by asking her _parents."_

"Of course not. I called Commissioner Hale, who got in touch with the New Zealand authorities for me. Stroke of luck that it's still early evening there right now." Sherlock paused. "I might have mentioned to Hale that you were in no fit state to head up this investigation."

"Thanks so much for undermining my career." Lestrade looked at Charlie again. For the whole conversation she'd been sitting placidly in Sherlock's arms, reaching up occasionally to give one of his dark curls a gentle, fascinated tug. "Sherlock," he said. "Look, I'm going up to bed, but could you give Charlie to me for five minutes and go up and check on John and Molly?"

Sherlock raised one eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because I texted John when I woke up fifteen minutes ago, asking if everything was all right."

"Is it?"

"No idea. He hasn't replied. Have you _ever_ known him to ignore a text?"

* * *

 

Dyer had just reached the door of Allison's makeshift prison cell, breakfast tray in hand, when his mobile phone rang. Muttering to himself in annoyance, he lay the tray on the carpet and pulled the phone out of his pocket, stepping out of Allison's earshot. "Hello?"

"Dyer."

Donovan.

"Hey," he said. "Get anything?" He'd left Donovan, as Sherlock had asked, to announce to the guests and staff that Allison Marr had been arrested and there would be no further enquiries.

"Oh, it pinged just about everybody, Jake. First off, Elizabeth's parents didn't react to Allison's name. We know it's her real one, so why wouldn't they?"

"What do you mean, they didn't react?"

"I mean, they didn't even ask 'who's that?'. And I'm not a behavioural expert, but it didn't seem to me like they were surprised." He heard something in the background of her call that might have been a door closing. "Meanwhile," she said. "Ishani Parikh came out with 'but why? That makes no sense' before she could connect her brain and her mouth. I love it when people do that."

"She's right," Dyer pointed out. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Yeah, but that's the thing: how does _she_ know that? She doesn't know Sherlock's chain of reasoning for having her arrested, because she wasn't there. And then, here's the really interesting thing. After that little gem, she said, 'But why would Allison kill Elizabeth?' Dismantle that one for me, constable."

Dyer felt a flash of irritation, but it only lasted a second. Donovan's everlasting attempts to get him to 'dismantle' statements and circumstancial evidence sounded patronising and often was, but it was good for him, and he knew it.

"Okay," he said. "She used Allison's name like that—someone referring to someone she already knows."

"Yep. And?"

"Which word did she emphasise? I mean, did she say ' _Why_ would Allison kill Elizabeth?' or 'Why _would_ Allison kill Elizabeth?' or-

"Good one, Jake. She said 'Why would Allison _kill_ Elizabeth?"

"So she knew Allison was blackmailing Elizabeth, then, sounds like," he said. "She meant 'Why would Allison kill Elizabeth when she was blackmailing her into bankruptcy?'"

"Exactly. I'm on it. I'll let you know if she has any more brain-mouth disconnects."

"What are the Haydens doing?"

"The dad is blustering about threatening to sue the Met."

"For what?"

"I don't think even he knows. His wife looks like she just wants to sink through the floor with embarrassment, but otherwise I'm not getting anything off her that suggests she knows more than she's saying. Alec's been blubbering like an idiot for the past half an hour, and Stewart, ah, well. Stewart's looking better and better by the minute, Jake. Since hearing about Allison's arrest, he won't stop bugging me with questions about the investigation."

"Like what?"

"How did we find out it was Allison? How did she get in and out of the room? What kind of gaol term is she looking at? That kind of thing. Elizabeth's still dead on the honeymoon suite floor, and he's wondering about Allison's gaol term?"

* * *

 

Dyer gave a warning knock on the door of Allison's room. She did not respond, but he opened the door anyway with one hand. In the other was the breakfast tray, which he steadied with his knee as the door opened.

"Not every day you get room service from a police detective," he said, trying on the boyish-charm persona he'd always found useful on a case. "I didn't make this, though, so you don't have to worry about catching this food poisoning thing that's going about the place."

Allison gave a weary smile. "It was the bloody tea, wasn't it," she said.

"How do you know about that?" Dyer asked before he could help himself. He didn't believe in Detective's Intuition, but the hairs on the back of his neck had just stood on end.

"It's part of my job to know about the kitchen stock," Allison explained. "I've been telling Azad for weeks to throw that tea out. He kept saying he would. Why he didn't?" she shrugged. "Anyone's guess. Mine is that he's a tight-arse."

"Yeah, well, I'm thinking he's regretting not throwing it out right about now," Dyer muttered, setting the tray down on the desk and sitting down. He was starving, and wished he'd brought up breakfast for himself, but working officers didn't eat in front of suspects unless it was part of their interview technique "I'm sorry," he said instead. "You know I didn't think we should arrest you. It's pretty clear to me you didn't do it, but, you know, Lestrade's my boss, so…" He trailed off with a sort of _bosses, what can you do about them?_ kind of shrug.

Allison had started to pull at a thread on her black polo shirt, and glanced down at her hands.

"The thing is," Dyer went on. "Even though I don't think you did it, I'm kind of surprised you're not talking more about who did."

"I don't know who killed her," she said, all prickles.

"I think you might, even if you don't think you do. Sherlock might've made a mistake in having you arrested, Allison, but he was right on one thing at least: if you heard something from behind Elizabeth and Stewart's bedroom door, it was something loud. Something louder than coughing or talking or sex."

She smirked at this. After a second trying to decide how to navigate it, he decided to ignore it rather than make any follow-up innuendo or flirtation.

"I'm thinking along the lines of screaming," he said. "Proper, getting-murdered screaming. Things being turned over, thrown down, that kind of thing." He stopped. It was a point of fact, and Allison should have known it, that there was no sign in the murdered woman's room that anything, or anyone, had been thrown about the place.

"And now I'm hearing from the police in New Zealand that Elizabeth's real name was Alicia, and she killed her little brother?" he ventured carefully. "Do you want to talk about that?"

"What's there to talk about?"

"Well, I'm just hearing the story now, so loads," he said. "How did… how did he die?"

Allison sighed, resigned to the tale. "'He' was named Michael," she said snippishly. "And he drowned."

"Elizabeth—Alicia—she drowned him?"

"That's what the courts eventually said. It was Boxing Day, and they were out in a property they owned near Matamata. There was a river backing onto the property, and Lish and Michael went swimming in the afternoon. Michael drowned; that's all anyone except Lish knows for sure. But there was an inquest and an autopsy, and they found finger marks on Michael's arms and scratches on hers. They said she drowned him. Then the idiot went and confessed."

"Why did she do it?" he asked.

"She wasn't… wasn't normal, even then. Her lawyers managed to convince the jury she was disturbed and had rage issues, and that killing Michael wasn't premeditated or anything—he'd done something to annoy her, because that's just what little brothers _do_ , and she lost her temper and held him under the water to punish him. Held him under for too long."

Silence.

"Do you think that's true?"

"I don't know." Allison exhaled. "Yes… no. Maybe. Of course, she killed him. Even she couldn't explain that away. But I suppose I always thought she just held him under to hurt him, and did it for too long. That's not murder."

"But that's what you were threatening to tell Stewart Hayden. Why wait to threaten her until after the wedding? Why not _before_ , and have all the fun of getting her to book this wedding and then call it off?"

She smiled wanly. "Because the stakes are higher when you have to actually get a divorce, not just call off an expensive party," she remarked, sweeping one straggling lock of blonde hair behind her ear.

"Okay," he said again, as if this unhinged plan was the most natural one in the world. "But… why? You were friends, even all the time she was in detention, and after she got out and moved over here. That's a long friendship. Sounds like a strong one, too; you can't have been too convinced by the idea she killed Michael. Had to be something else that upset you…"

He stopped and counted three under his breath.

"Stewart," he said, sounding for all the world like it had only just crossed his mind. "It wasn't just _Elizabeth_ you knew before today. You'd already met Stewart as well. Through Elizabeth?"

"Sort of," she said. "After Lish moved here, we kept in touch all the time. Mostly online. I don't do very well with phone calls."

Dyer smiled briefly. "Not fond of them myself."

"She came back to New Zealand once or twice, but I never could come visit her here, until three years ago, when my Nanna died and left me a little bit of money. I'd always wanted to see the UK, and Lish offered to put me up, so I came over."

"Where did she live then?"

"Same place she always did. Leeds. But you don't come all the way over here just to sit around in a flat in Leeds, so we went and did the tourist thing—everywhere from Cornwall to Scotland. It was in Scotland that we met Stewart. We were on one of those three-day historical tours of the Highlands, all Bonnie Prince Charlie stuff, and he was our guide."

"I'm beginning to see my way around this now. You liked him? He liked you?"

She stretched one leg out and tilted her heel, as if she had a cramp in it. "I suppose it wouldn't have worked anyway," she said, trying for a casual tone that lasted until the last syllable; then she scrubbed one eye with the back of her hand and sniffed. "I mean, he lived in Scotland, I lived in New Zealand, and never the twain shall meet, right?"

Dyer had no idea what a train had to do with anything, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

"So I… don't think he'd have ever been the love of my life. But we had something on that trip. Something that was _mine_ for a change."

"And Elizabeth took it."

"After I went home, Stewart and I still kept in touch. Emails, texts. Then he accidentally cc'ed me into an email to Elizabeth… yeah, you know, he didn't accidentally. You can't _accidentally_ CC someone into a private email. It was his way of dumping me, I suppose."

So far, everything Dyer had seen or heard about Stewart Hayden indicated he was hardly Catch of the Year. "Jesus," he said, all sympathy. Then, after a pause, "Still, that's no reason to kill Elizabeth."

"I agree. That's why I didn't kill her." She stretched out her legs again. "But yeah, OK, I was blackmailing her. After I got that email and had a massive row with Stewart, I contacted Elizabeth and told her she could pay up or I'd tell the love of her life she was a psycho who once drowned her brother. Stewart's a bastard, but I don't think he'd have kept her around long if he'd found out the sort of person she was. Between them they'd ruined my life, so I thought I might as well make a bit of money out of it."

"That's… one way of looking at it." Dyer thought to himself that it was even odds now as to who was the bigger 'psycho'- Elizabeth, who had killed a little boy because she couldn't control her temper, or Allison, who'd decided in cold blood to blackmail her supposed best friend because her boyfriend cheated on her. He looked back to his case notes. "Okay," was all he said. "Just to satisfy my own curiosity, why the notes?"

She looked confused. "What notes?"

"Elizabeth told Sherlock Holmes she kept getting these threatening notes at her house, on her car, things like that. Said they just said 'Memento Mori' on them, which apparently means 'remember you must die.'"

Allison was staring at him by now. "I have no idea what you mean," she said blankly. "Nobody sends notes when they're blackmailing someone. Way too easy for them to take them to the nearest police station. Nothing between us was ever written down."


	14. Red

Once Dyer arrived to take over babysitting the Ross-Hayden wedding guests again, Donovan went up to her room, finding her husband curled up asleep on the bed.

 _Poor Rahul,_ she thought with genuine tenderness as she tiptoed around the room, searching through her suitcase for a hairbrush and tortoiseshell clip. So much for their New Year's Eve… though it really had been quite a good time, up until the discovery of Elizabeth's body. Even after that, when she'd explained to him that she was essentially on overtime now and needed to leave him to his own devices, he hadn't complained.

She thought briefly about waking him up to give him an appreciative hug. On reflection, though, she would have been annoyed at someone waking _her_ for that, so she left him to sleep and went to take a shower and wash her hair. As she'd once told Sherlock Holmes (though that had mostly been to wind him up), she did her best thinking under a hot shower.

The investigation into Elizabeth Hayden's death had, in under four hours, almost reached a standstill. It wasn't just that the lead investigating officer was out of action with food poisoning and the World's Only Consulting Detective had assaulted a witness, and now seemed more interested in babysitting than in solving Elizabeth's murder. On top of that, as Lestrade had already reminded her at least fifteen times, nobody in the building had access to adequate legal representation. As such, anything that passed between suspects and investigators was strictly off the record. One and all could give a full and detailed confession of murder, and it wouldn't be worth the paper it was written down on.

There was an outside chance, still, that the killer had slipped outside her notice, but Donovan doubted it. In such a murder as Elizabeth's, the killer would almost certainly know the victim well and have a motive, even if it was only a motive that would make sense to an overreactive egoist. As such, she'd all but eliminated Elizabeth's parents from the investigation. They simply had no reason to kill their daughter; and if they'd wanted her dead, there were a million better ways of doing it than stabbing her to death in her honeymoon suite. She'd dismissed Elizabeth's parents-in-law for similar reasons, though the father-in-law was still downstairs ranting and raving about suing the Metropolitan Police, and that was enough to give her pause. Hiding something? Protecting someone?

Perhaps. But instinct was telling Donovan to focus her attentions on the guests she and Dyer had already sarcastically christened The Golden Trio: Ishani Parikh and the Hayden brothers.

Stewart Hayden had cried and keened over Elizabeth's body until they'd made him leave the room; after that, she had an idea that he'd continued to wail in the corridor for about half an hour. Since then, though, a sort of calm had dscended on him. She thought that serenity might even have been magnified when she'd told him Allison had been arrested. And that was the other thing she'd noticed, and Dyer had agreed: Stewart Hayden seemed forlorn—grief-stricken, even—in a cool, calm and collected kind of way. But one thing he _wasn't_ was angry.

If someone had murdered Rahul, and she'd been told that this person was under arrest upstairs, the first thing _she_ would do is demand to see the culprit. If allowed in to see them, she'd tear them to pieces with her bare hands. If she wasn't allowed, she'd rip the door off to get to them and _then_ tear them to pieces with her bare hands. It was downright bizarre that a man robbed of his wife on their wedding night wasn't angry about it.

In fact, the only thing standing in the way of considering Stewart Hayden the lead suspect in the case was that Lestrade, and several others, had seen him among them when the door had been broken open. Unless he could teleport, he was, as Lestrade had said, in the clear for now.

How could the case be that simple, yet that complicated?

And, she thought as she put on a more comfortable pair of jeans and a t-shirt, it wouldn't be _impossible_ to get Stewart to talk. But she'd have to pull some serious mind games on him, and it would take a long time, perhaps the best part of a day. Running on just over an hour's sleep, she had no inclination to grill him into any admissions he could just deny later.

Alec Hayden, then? Just as futile as his brother, in his own way. Alec was a mess of nerves, but that was the problem: he'd probably confess to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby under the current circumstances. Still, Donovan had to wonder whether the Hayden brothers really had such wildly differing personalities that one was practically Zen and the other hysterical, or whether one of them was faking it—and if so, which one.

Either way, it left Ishani. Brain-to-mouth-disconnected Ishani Parikh. Earlier, she'd unleashed story after story of what a petty, mean piece of work Elizabeth Hayden could be, but when Donovan had pressed her to explain her bizarre account of the poker game with the Hayden brothers, she'd clammed up. It hadn't been a priority to spend all morning trying to coax the information out of her. Running out of further options, it was time to revisit that little chat.

Donovan left Rahul still sleeping on the bed and went downstairs to fetch Ishani from where she was sulking in one corner of the reception hall. The staff of Arndale Hall had started to serve breakfast, and the smell of coffee, toast and bacon permeated the entire ground floor. Donovan, starving by now, picked up a tray on her way past the kitchen and took Ishani to the relative privacy of one of the gaming rooms.

"Coffee?" she asked her, putting the tray down on a little circular table in the middle of the room and going back to shut the door behind them.

Ishani, looking much more nervous than she had the last time she and Donovan had spoken, shook her head mutely. Donovan decided that she didn't have time to coax the precious little petal into taking some nourishment for her vapours, and instead pointed to the nearest chair. "Okay," she said. "Sit."

Ishani sat.

"Let me make this really clear. You either start talking—and telling me the _truth_ —or I'll change my mind and I _will_ call your parents and let them know about you and Alec. And don't forget, my husband is fluent in Hindi, so, you know, if you've got an elderly grandfather in Patna or somewhere who'd just _love_ to hear what you've been up to…"

Ishani glared. It was, Donovan thought, the first sign of unguarded emotion she'd ever seen from her. Buttons successfully pushed. _Please, Sergeant Donovan, feel free to keep pushing them._

"You would not," was all she said.

"Try me. And you wouldn't be the first." Donovan was prepared to cite examples if necessary. Even as far as Murder Squad standards went, she was known for being ruthless in this respect, having outed many sexually active teens to their parents and many straying husbands to their formerly ignorant wives in the course of pursuing an investigation. She couldn't force witnesses and suspects into cooperating, but she could apply some serious leverage if they didn't.

"You may not have liked Elizabeth much," she went on. "And you know what I think: you're a hypocrite for pretending to be her friend, let alone agreeing to be her bridesmaid. But this really isn't about any of your petty little leave-it-in-high-school dramas, unless those dramas are what got Elizabeth killed. That's all I care about. Finding out who killed her, and making sure they're brought to trial. Even if it makes your home life a bit uncomfortable."

"A bit uncomfortable?"

"Now's the time," she said in much softer tones, "to tell me if you're genuinely in danger. From your family or anyone else."

Ishani glared at her. "Don't be disgusting," she said. "What, you think I'm in danger just because-"

"So the whole thing about how your family would _kill you_ for screwing Alec is exaggerated, then. 'Kill you' as in 'give you a good bollocking' rather than 'knife you twice and leave you to choke to death on your own blood on the bedroom floor'. Good to hear." Donovan paused. "Either way, Ishani if you trust me and talk to me, I'll do everything in my power to help and protect you. I'm good at that. Ask anyone."

Ishani looked down, examining the chips in her crimson nail polish.

"I know a cry for help when I hear one," Donovan said. "And your stupidly elaborate lies about that poker game, that was yours. I need to know everything that happened to you from about midnight onwards. Start at 'Happy New Year'."

* * *

Sherlock reached the third-floor landing and approached the door to John and Molly's room much as if he'd approach an unexploded IED. He could hear a commotion of urgent voices behind it, though the walls were too thick to make out much of what was being said. A second after he tapped on it with his fingers, though, he heard a gutteral, drawn-out cry from Molly. He threw the door open without waiting for further permission. Molly was, to his surprise, still on her feet somehow, though she was clinging to the back of the armchair with both hands. In half a second, Sherlock noticed two things: she was soaked through to the skin with sweat and so pale that her lips were practically blue.

"Oh my God," she exclaimed. _"Knock,_ Sherlock!"

"Sorry, Sherlock," John said, though he didn't sound particularly sorry. He was standing next to Molly, and didn't even glance over his shoulder. "Bit distracted right now…"

"Lestrade sent you a text," Sherlock said, feeling that he had to explain his intrusion somehow. "He said you never answered it."

"Yeah, I've been _busy_ ," was the caustic reply. "Molly, I'd feel a lot better if you would at least sit down-"

 _"I_ wouldn't!"

"Okay," he backtracked meekly, holding his hands up as if placating a lunatic with a knife. "Okay, just… don't fall, okay?"

"I think I'm dying… no, I'm serious, I'm actually dying..."

"Nope. Not even close. It's fine. You'll be fine." John's gaze fell on the mobile phone he'd left lying on the mattress, and darted over to pick it up. After reading the screen for a few seconds, he opened the phone book and started texting at lightning speed.

"Who are you texting?" Molly managed to get out.

"Harry," he said, and Sherlock reached surreptitiously into his own pocket, changing his text alert bleep to a muted buzz. There was no way, none at all, that John was texting Harry at a time like this. Even after nearly two years of sobriety, Harry was still at risk of falling off the wagon. If anything was going to cause that, being told Molly was in distress would do it.

Four seconds later, Sherlock's phone buzzed.

"Can I use your bathroom?" he asked after a few more discreet seconds.

John waved vaguely at the ensuite door, and Sherlock went in and shut the door behind him before pulling his phone out of the left pocket of his trousers. From the room beyond, Molly cried out again, a muffled, urgent noise, as if through gritted teeth.

_90sec contractions spaced 3mins indicative complications emergency intervention needed ASAP_

_— Today 6:33am_

On autopilot, Sherlock twisted the cold tap on the basin and splashed at his face. His heart had started to beat so hard it hurt. 'Indicative complications emergency intervention' wasn't John texting about his family. It was Dr. John H. Watson, MD, texting about a patient. And not all of John's patients survived, especially when emergency intervention was not possible.

Over the sound of the running water, he moved the plastic bathroom curtain aside and opened the window slightly. All was still dark outside, but the storm forecast had proved true: the wind had died down, and while snow was still falling, he wouldn't classify it as blizzard by any stretch. With clumsy, shaking fingers, he retrieved his phone again and brought up Mycroft's mobile number.

_Send the helicopter now. - S_

_— Today 6:34am_

_~o0o~_

_On standby to leave at 0700 - M_

_— Today 6:36am_

_~o0o~_

_No. Now. Risk the weather. - S_

_— Today 6:36am._

* * *

"Tell you a story. When I was about fourteen," Donovan was saying casually, crossing her legs and sipping her coffee, "I got caught smoking at school. My mother… well, the less said about how Mum reacted, the better. Let's just say she wasn't happy. Practically turned my arse into leather. But the thing is, I stood there and took it from her, not a single word. Know why?"

Ishani raised one eyebrow sarcastically. "Because you were guilty?"

Now that was an oddly… legal… term. _Guilty_.

"Try again," Donovan said cheerily.

"Because you felt bad?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Then why?"

"Because Mum thought I'd been caught smoking cigarettes, and she was ready to disown me. She'd have had herself a heart attack if she'd known it was actually pot."

For a second, Donovan thought she might have sparked up enough rapport with Ishani to make the younger woman smile, but Ishani literally scrubbed it off her face. "So what's the point of your story, sergeant?"

"The point is that I'm getting that vibe off you. You're not happy I'm threatening to call half of India with the news that you're screwing a Scottish bloke, but that's still better than me telling them what you were _really_ up to, isn't it?"

"That's what I was really up to."

"No, I meant after," she said, sipping her coffee again.

Ishani looked genuinely confused. "After, when?"

"After you and Alec arrived on the scene. How did you even know something was wrong, anyway? You were in a bedroom on the level above them."

"We heard a commotion," Ishani said, a little feverishly. "There were voices-"

"Doubt it," Donovan said. "You and Alec were practically first on the scene, so you can't have heard much more than Allison Marr raising the alarm, if that. And she ran down and raised the alarm on the _first floor,_ while Elizabeth was dead on the second and you and Alec were on the third. But okay, let's go with you hearing a commotion a full floor below you and working out that it was something bad enough that you needed to disentangle, put your clothes on and go investigate."

Ishani gave her a death glare.

"Let's look at where you all were when the door was opened," Donovan continued. "You might've reached there at roughly the same time, but you weren't together for long. Stewart rushed over and grabbed Elizabeth, crying like he was auditioning for a soap opera. You sat down on the floor next to the bed and started screaming your head off. Why?"

"Because I walked into a room and found my friend murdered!"

"Nah," Donovan said. "But again, I don't care. The important question is this: while Stewart was wailing and you were having hysterics, did anyone keep track of what _Alec_ was up to?"

* * *

"Are you sure there's nothing I can do to help?" Sherlock asked again, for what felt like the twentieth time in ten minutes.

"Sure." John barely glanced over his shoulder at him. "Unless you can hurry things up with getting us out of here."

Now that was something he could help with… or, more correctly, that Mycroft could help with. Sherlock checked his phone again.

_Medivac helicopter left Leeds 6:41am. ETA 7:02am - M_

_\- Today 6:43am_

"On its way," he said, noting the time. "Only a few minutes. No, really, there isn't _something_ else I can do?"

"You can go back to our room and pack our things up for us," John suggested. "You don't have to get everything, but we'll each need a change of clothes and a toothbrush."

"What about Charlie?"

"Once you're done with our stuff, go back and give Greg a hand with her. She won't be able to come with us in the helicopter. You'll need to look after her until you can bring her to the hospital by car, and then we can sort things out… hey," he broke off, giving his full attention to Molly again. "Hey. Shh…"

Sherlock knew a dismissal when he heard one by now. He shut the door quietly behind himself and made his way toward the staircase, intending to go up to the Watson's bedroom on the third floor. He'd scarcely passed two doors in the corridor, though, when he heard a short, sharp scream from Molly. And then John:

"Sherlock, Jesus, _help me!"_

Later, Sherlock had absolutely no recollection of how he got back into the room, or of anything else but the overwhelming: blood. Everywhere. John had somehow got Molly the three or four steps between the armchair and the bed and was trying to set her down on the mattress. She was soaked crimson from the waist down, a widening patch on the carpet behind the armchair and trailing over to another dripping over the frame of the bed.

"That's it," John was saying in a low sort of monotone, though Sherlock could see he was easily as pale and shaky as Molly was. "Lie down, Molly, it's _really_ important you stay completely still-"

"Oh my God," Sherlock blurted out.

" _Don't,_ Sherlock. Just don't. How close is the helicopter?"

Sherlock checked his watch. "Eleven minutes," he stammered. "Based on the time it left the hospital, the weather, and factoring in landing time..."

John picked up an already-stained towel and started trying to mop the mess off Molly's legs. Since that one terrified scream, she'd barely made a sound.

"John," she said through blue-white lips. "I-"

"No, it's fine," he said calmly, brushing her damp hair off her face with one hand, leaving a light smear of blood across her forehead. "Look at me—no, don't look down. Look at me. It's fine. You'll be fine."

"The twins-"

"-Will both be fine. Just hold on for me, okay? Don't panic, and don't move."

John looked over at Sherlock in mute agony, and instantly, he understood. Eleven minutes until the helicopter's arrival. A minimum of five minutes to stabilise Molly and transfer her to the helicopter. Twenty minutes to return to the hospital. With half a pint of blood now soaking Molly, John, the mattress and the carpet, and more in the offing, Molly mightn't have thirty-six minutes. And it was becoming increasingly likely that the twins didn't.

"I've run out of towels," was all John said to him. "Get some more, now."

"That's not going to stop the bleeding, it's-"

"Sherlock, did you hear me tell you to get some towels?" John demanded. "Dark ones, if you can find them. Now. Go."


	15. For Charlie

John made his way through a confusing network of hospital corridors, partly on instinct, seeking out natural air and light. After a few false turns he reached the front lobby, with its shining plate glass windows that let in a flood of winter sunshine. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the display, registering that it was now eleven minutes past one in the afternoon, and that in the last four hours he'd accumulated seventy-three missed calls and forty-nine texts from a variety of people, including Sherlock, Greg and, dammit, _Harry_. He called his voicemail retrieval and selected the most recent message from Sherlock:

 _John, please. Call me. Whatever's happened, whatever's happening, call me when you get this message._ A long pause. _By the way, Charlie is fine. Call me._

Timestamped eight minutes ago, roughly when he'd still been in the lift.

But he was going to need coffee for this one. He went into the cafeteria opposite the lobby doors, making an automatic order for a flat white without even checking the menu board on the far wall. The woman behind the counter smiled sympathetically at him. "You look a little peaky. Everything okay?" she asked as she took his offered banknote and handed back change.

 _Everything okay?_ Was that a normal thing to ask customers in a hospital cafeteria? Exactly how bad did he look that he was 'peaky' by _hospital_ standards?

He smiled at her automatically. "Yeah," he said. "Fine. Just tired. New dad."

"Aww, lovely! Boy or girl?"

"Girls. Twins." John studied the bloodstains under his fingernails.

Something in his tone, or in his manner, must have signaled to her not to ask for any more details. A deafening silence fell between them, and it seemed like an age before she handed him a full Styrofoam cup across the counter. He took it outside to a little dining area, stainless steel tables and chairs under a clear awning, regardless of the freezing chill. He needed it. Nothing like a cold shock and a gallon of caffeine to make you feel alive. As the automatic doors closed behind him, his phone buzzed again, and he retrieved it from his jeans pocket.

_Will you answer your bloody phone before I put MI6 onto this_

_\- Today 1:20pm_

Sherlock dispensing with punctuation? Not even bothering to sign off with the redundant 'S'? He really was on edge. Unable to think up any more excuses to delay the inevitable, John started thumbing out a reply.

_Crash caesarean 7:41a_

"John, for God's _sake…"_

John looked up in the direction of the voice, punctuated by a slammed car door.

Trust Sherlock Holmes to engineer such a well-timed entrance.

A taxi had just pulled up at the ranks a few metres away, and Sherlock had got out of one side and was at the other, door open, apparently struggling to get Charlie out of a car seat. Leaving his half-full coffee at the table, John got up and went over to help him. Sherlock could solve complex puzzles, code binary effortlessly, and complete a Rubiks cube in under ten seconds, but car seats for toddlers were a challenge.

"I was about to send you a message," John said to him, fumbling with the clips of Charlie's seat harness. "Just now. Sorry..." He lifted his crabby, whining little daughter in his arms, grateful to have her close. "Has she eaten?"

"Of course." Sherlock sounded genuinely offended. "I'm not in the habit of starving children."

Judging from the smell in the taxi and on Charlie's clothes, John was fairly sure Sherlock had just bought her McDonald's. He spent a second wondering if it was worth being annoyed about it. He and Molly tried so hard not to give Charlie junk food all the time. "Come on, darling," he said to her instead, snuggling her up against his shoulder. "Daddy will buy you some juice, okay?"

Sherlock stopped, staring at him.

"What?"

"'Darling'," he repeated. "'Daddy'. You don't normally talk like that. Not in front of other people. Tell me what happened. Tell me now. Everything."

"We got here in time," John said hollowly. "God knows how. Emergency caesarean, 7:41am. I think. I wasn't really paying attention to the time."

"And the twins are all right?"

John absently brushed Charlie's hair off her forehead. "They're alive," he said.

"If the best you can say is that they're _alive_ -"

"They're both going to be in neonatal intensive care for a while, Sherlock; they'll need to be on respirators and feeding tubes for a couple of weeks. Both of them have jaundice. The younger one swallowed a lot of blood during delivery and had to be rescuscitated. She'll have respiratory problems for a little while."

"… And… Molly?"

John swallowed hard. "They couldn't stop her bleeding. Had to do an emergency hysterectomy while she was still on the table."

Sherlock looked absolutely stricken. "Oh, God," he said.

"That's why I haven't been looking at my phone, Sherlock. I'm sorry. I wasn't allowed to have it on in the intensive care unit."

* * *

It was a point of official policy that young children weren't allowed in the hospital's intensive care unit. Or rather, John thought tiredly, _most people_ weren't allowed to bring their young children into the intensive care unit. As a doctor, though, and with the backing of the Cabinet Office, MI6 and the Metropolitan Police, he'd been reassured that nobody was going to stop him bringing Charlie in to see her mother. After practically drenching his firstborn in hand sanitiser, he brought her through to Molly's bedside, drawing the curtains around and praying Charlie would keep relatively quiet and not blow their cover.

Molly had been on a respirator when she'd first been taken in from surgery, but someone had downgraded her to a nasal cannula. Three different IVs, John noted; one was morphine, one saline, and he made plans to ask her doctor what the third was. Drainage tubes. Catheters. She was as white as death, but as he approached the bed her eyes flickered open. A moment of incomprehension, like she was waking from a dream. Then she held her hand out.

"Charlie," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "Hello, darling."

Charlie, a little intimidated by the medical paraphernalia around her, shoved her fist into her mouth shyly.

"How're you feeling?" John asked her.

"Loopy," she slurred. "Completely off my head, actually."

"Any pain?"

"A little bit." She paused, shutting her eyes for so long that John started to wonder if she'd fallen asleep and if he should take Charlie out again. "Are the babies okay?" she asked at length.

"Yeah." John cleared his throat. "Both fine."

"Can I see them?"

"Now?"

"Mmm."

"…Yeah," he said, grappling with Charlie, who was starting to get restless and wanted to be put down. "I'll get a nurse to go get the incubator..." He paused, grimacing while she couldn't see him. "They're okay, Lolly," he explained. "But it… might be a bit of a shock when you see them."

How, he thought, do you really prepare someone to see their babies hooked up to feeding tubes and respirators and catheters? Babies should be chubby and rosy and healthy, and at least twice what the twins weighed. Neither of them had broken the four-pound mark. "You're going to hold up, right?" was all he asked.

She nodded, perhaps understanding what she was about to see. Perhaps not. "Promise."

"Okay. Stay awake," he said, leaning over and kissing her on her damp forehead. "I'll be back any second."

* * *

The neonatal nursery was just down the corridor, the better for keeping seriously ill newborns close to their seriously ill mothers. Much to John's surprise, he found Sherlock in the corridor, loitering at the viewing glass. Someone had already moved the twins' incubator close for him, the girls nestled together, red-raw, fragile as baby birds, swathed in pink flannel and wearing white cotton caps. John had a second of wondering where those clothes had come from. Anything he and Molly had bought was both way too large and still in London.

"How on earth did you get in, Sherlock?" he asked.

Sherlock shook himself out of a reverie and looked at John in disappointment. "You know how," was all he said. "Anyone can get into anywhere, provided they pick the right moment."

"Or tell a good lie about being someone's father."

"Both, really." Sherlock took in a sharp breath, looking back at the tiny new humans in the incubator. "They look far more like Molly than Charlie does," he finally remarked.

"You think? I can't tell yet, except for the dark hair. Lucky them, though."

"Charlie is not ugly," Sherlock said. "Do they... have names yet?"

John smiled tiredly. "I think so," he said, "provided Molly doesn't change her mind when she's a bit stronger and not off her head on morphine. Sophie Olivia and Louise Beatrice."

"Left to right?"

"I haven't the faintest. I can't tell them apart. A and B respectively, though." John gave Charlie to Sherlock—even he wasn't prepared to breach the rules of the NICU by introducing a germ-riddled toddler into the midst of immuno-compromised newborns. He knocked on the nursery door, and after a brief consultation with the nurse who opened it, she wheeled the incubator into the corridor to take them up to Molly's bed cubicle. She paused just outside the doors to give Sherlock a brief look at the twins, and John reached through a circular hole in one side of the incubator and gently touched the nearest baby's tiny foot, checking her ankle bracelet. "B," he said. "Louise."

"'Sophie Olivia' is hardly a surprise," Sherlock said. "Though Molly said she liked them as two different names."

"Did she?"

"Yes. But 'Louise Beatrice'?"

"You can't blame me for that one," John said. "Louise after Mrs Hudson, and Molly has been trying to talk me into Beatrice for months. She likes names that mean things."

"What does it mean?"

"You don't know?" John looked impish. "Holy God, someone call Mycroft, quick."

"Shut up," Sherlock said mildly. "I don't have a large enough hard drive to waste space in it with the meaning of baby names. And I'm waiting."

A strange grimace passed John's face, as if he was fighting back emotion. After a deep breath, it was gone. "It means 'Bringer of Joy'," he said. "I'll be back soon, Sherlock. Look after Charlie for me."

* * *

It was another hour and a half before John reminded himself that Charlie was bored, tired, hungry, and still under Sherlock's supervision. After a text exchange, he met the two of them at the cafeteria again, and Greg had joined them. Both he and Sherlock had coffee, and Charlie, sitting in her high chair, had a bottle of juice that she'd already half-spilled everywhere.

"Greg," John said. "I had no idea you were here. Where's Mel? Is she all right?" His gaze strayed down to the drip attachment taped to the back of Greg's left hand.

"A&E," Greg explained. "Under observation for dehydration, but they said they're very unlikely to admit her, and they'll probably kick her out in an hour or two."

"And what about you?"

Oh," he said dismissively, glancing down at the drip, as if he'd forgotten it was there. "It's fine. Had a primadonna moment in the hallway when we came in, so they hooked me up for a bit as well, but it's fine."

Judging from how pale and haggard Greg still looked, John doubted that. "But they haven't admitted you?"

"God, no. I haven't vomited in ages, and they don't give beds to people who can walk, basically."

For a minute or two, they all fell silent, watching people coming and going from the nearby hospital entrance. Finally Sherlock, who'd been unusually quiet, got to his feet.

"You okay?" John asked him.

"Yeah," he said, a little overenthusiastically. "I just need to… call Mycroft." He pulled his phone out of his coat pocket. "Commend him for his diligence… I'll be back."

"Sherlock-"

"I'll be back."

Puzzled, John watched him cross the lobby and go out the automatic doors and walk down toward the taxi rank before putting the phone to his ear. He had a vague idea that Sherlock may not actually be ringing Mycroft—after all, _someone_ had rung Harry earlier—but decided to puzzle that out later. He had enough to think about as it was.

"I'm just going to ask. Is everyone going to be okay?" Greg finally asked, though he was leaning across the table to pull Charlie's high chair closer and not looking directly at him.

John rubbed his eyes. "I don't know," he said.

"Balance of probabilities."

"Balance of probabilities is that everyone will make a full recovery. Or as close to one as you can after you've had a hysterectomy, I suppose."

"When will they be able to come home?"

"Ages. At least a month, probably, depending on how Molly's recovery goes."

"But she'll be home before the twins?"

"Probably," John said, irritated and determined not to show it. It was hardly Greg's fault that he'd been up all night having the worst experience of his life. "I don't know, Greg."

"In any case, take full advantage of this while you can," Greg said, handing him a set of keys across the table.

John took them, looking up at him suspiciously. "What's this?" he asked.

"Keys."

"Yeah, I can see that they're keys. Keys to what?"

"You and Charlie are being accommodated indefinitely at the Radisson Blu, courtesy of the Metropolitan police," he said. "It's just around the corner. Five minutes."

John frowned, flicking the keys through his fingers. "Why?" he asked. "I'm not a police employee."

"You've helped us solve twenty-two cases in six years. I'm pretty sure that actually makes you a police employee."

A bitter little laugh. "Pay me, maybe?"

"Yeah, well, as it happens, I'm seeing about that."

John looked up at him in surprise. "Really?"

"We'll talk about it at a better time. In the meanwhile, please, I know this is going to be hard to stick to, but look after yourself. For your own sake and Charlie's. If I find out you're sleeping more than one night a week in the NICU and eating nothing but crap from the cafeteria or the vending machines, I'm seriously going to have you banned from the premises."

"Greg-"

"Don't look at me like that. I've _been_ that dad. You know Matthew was nearly six weeks early, right? Had a rough few first weeks, the poor kid, and so did Julie. I spent his first week camped out in the hospital corridor, and I promise, it didn't actually help any of us." He paused. "And if you need help with Charlie," he said. "Looking after her, or whatever. Just ask. Please. Ask." As if he couldn't handle any more of this sort of talk, he got slowly to his feet. "Sorry," he said. "Will you be okay here with Charlie until Sherlock gets back? I need to get back to Mel."

"Sure," John said, burning with shame. How was he even drinking coffee like some sort of… self-satisfied yuppie… when most of his family was hooked up to respirators? For a second he was overwhelmed with disgust for himself. As Greg gave him a vague nod and made his way out of the cafeteria, Charlie grinned and handed him her juice bottle.

"For Daddy?" she said.

"Oh," he said in a choked voice, though he was smiling. "Thank you." He took the bottle and immediately handed it back, as this was how the game was played and Charlie would probably have screamed blue murder if he'd deviated from the rules. "For Charlie," he said.

"Yum!"

"Yeah, it is, isn't it?"

 _Hold it together._ John glanced back out the doors, but Sherlock was no longer pacing around with his phone, and for a moment he felt completely at sea. Again, that pang of self-loathing. How was it that he couldn't handle looking after his own child for ten minutes?

"John…"

He glanced up, startled. Sherlock was standing to his left, slightly behind him and diagonally from Charlie's high chair. "Hmm?"

"Sandwich." Sherlock pointed. "You need to eat."

A sandwich had indeed appeared on the table right in front of him, somehow; probably while he'd been leaning over taking Charlie's juice bottle. "Oh," he said listlessly, reaching out for it. "Thanks."

"It's been there for two minutes, approximately." Sherlock swallowed. "In fact, I've been either in your peripheral vision, or right in front of you, four times in the last six minutes."

"And I didn't see you," John said dully. Trust Sherlock to play a game like sneaking-up-on-you, at a time like this…

"Of course you saw me. You just didn't _notice_ me," Sherlock went on, sitting down in the seat Greg had just vacated. "Because you were focusing on the only things that matter to you right now. The only things that _should_ matter to you right now."

John put a hand to his forehead. "Sherlock," he said. "I'm really tired right now. I don't get it. Help me out here?"

"It was always obvious to me that Stewart Hayden murdered his wife. It's nearly _always_ the husband, especially at a critical time in the relationship, like a marriage or a divorce or the birth of a child. It was never a matter of who did it, but how. And I've just shown you how."

"But Stewart Hayden was in the corridor with everyone else when it happened."

"No, he wasn't. And he was never playing poker with his brother and Ishani Parikh, either. Alec and Ishani were having sex in Ishani's room, and Stewart was in his own room, killing his wife. He knew Lestrade and Melissa were more than likely either having sex or asleep at that time, and wouldn't notice anything happening in the next room. Just about everyone else was either asleep on the floor above them or drinking and gambling on the floor below. What he didn't realise is that Allison Marr had an appointment to see Elizabeth at three a.m., and would choose that particular time to walk down the corridor outside his room, wearing heavy-soled, almost silent shoes. She heard the commotion and raised the alarm. There were people outside the door in seconds. There was no way out of that room, and he had Elizabeth's blood on his shirt."

"Okay, so…"

"So he had to act quickly, and he did. When the door was broken, it swung into an open position, with a small area behind it to the right of anyone coming into the room. Stewart hid there and chose precisely the right moment to emerge, run to his wife, and clutch her body to his chest, giving the perfect explanation for her blood on his shirt. Nobody noticed he'd come from behind the door, not the doorway. They didn't notice because every single one of them was focused on Elizabeth herself. The victim. The person who mattered."

"He was… _hiding_ _behind the door?"_

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"It was that simple the whole time?"

"Please don't make me say it again, John."

"How long have you known?"

"From the first, more or less. It was obvious Stewart Hayden was the killer. All I had to do is work out _how_ he could have done it."

"And in the meantime, you had Allison Marr arrested."

"Yes. She'd started to make sense of what she'd heard behind the door when she went up to see Elizabeth."

"What did she hear?"

"Stewart's voice. Stewart isn't a serial killer—he wouldn't kill Allison, or anyone else, for his own amusement or gratification. But if he thought himself in a trap, I knew he'd react like the rat he is."

"And attack anyone and everything, trying to get out of the trap."

"Exactly. It was particularly exacerbated by the fact that we were snowed in. Allison Marr had to be locked up for her own safety—and so that Stewart and his brother mistakenly believed we'd moved our focus elsewhere and they weren't being watched so closely. Donovan had them under surveillance the whole time."

"And Alec was Stewart's accomplice?"

"Ishani, too, though she was perhaps an unwilling one. You'll remember the reports that when the door was broken down, Ishani had an over-the-top screaming fit so severe that everyone's attention was drawn to it and Melissa had to escort her from the room."

Sherlock said this with such obvious significance that John looked questioningly at him.

"On account of current circumstances, John, I'll excuse any slowness on your part."

"Thanks."

"Why should it fall to _Melissa_ to comfort a woman she doesn't even know, instead of, say, the man Ishani had been sleeping with up until a few moments before the murder? We know Stewart was wailing over Elizabeth's body and Ishani was sitting on the floor screaming, but while you would reasonably expect Alec to be comforting either his hysterical lover or his bereaved brother, nobody remembers what he was doing. So where was he?"

"I don't know, Sherlock, I wasn't even there. Where?"

"Retrieving the knife from where Stewart had had to leave it, behind the door. It was easy for him to leave with it—nobody was looking at him. Shortly after you and Molly were evacuated, I ordered a search of the most likely place he'd hide a knife—in the cistern of one of the toilets in the women's bathrooms."

"I don't want to know why that's the most likely place to hide a knife," John muttered, glancing up at the ceiling. "So you found it?"

"Yes. Well, actually, Matthew Lestrade found it."

"That should give him great material for his next book."

"He said as much. I don't think Alec knew Stewart was planning to murder Elizabeth. But he wasn't prepared to let him be caught, either. Family is family."

"So why did Stewart do it?"

"Partly for Elizabeth's life insurance money, which would have netted him over two hundred thousand pounds, if he hadn't been caught. But mostly because she was a spoiled, selfish woman who made his life hell… and then he found out she'd also murdered her brother. The notes were the key. Killing your wife is one thing. Spending a month sending her threatening notes is another. And Stewart is really the only person who had means and motivation to leave those notes."

John scrubbed at his face and exhaled. "Thanks," he finally said.

"For what?" Sherlock looked honestly surprised.

"For giving me something else to think about, even if it was only for two minutes…" John covered his face in his hands, breathing into them for a few seconds.

Sherlock fell silent, struggling for the right response to this one. "You're welcome," he finally mumbled.

John took his hands away from his face again, almost viciously proud that he'd regained that much of himself. Dry-eyed. That was all he'd been aiming for. "You've got no idea what it feels like to watch the person you love most in pain, and not being able to help them."

"Oh, John," Sherlock said, putting a hesitant hand on his shoulder. "I really think I do."


	16. Choices

John and Charlie spent only a week at the Radisson Blu in Leeds, after which time Molly, Sophie and Louise were all declared safe to be transferred to London to continue their recovery. At five in the evening on the ninth of January, the day after Molly and the twins were transferred down to London, Harry was finally able to visit them for the first time.

"They don't look real," she commented once visiting hours were over and she and John were eating dinner in the hospital cafeteria, expressly against Greg's orders. "… Oh, come on," she continued, seeing her brother's unimpressed expression. "You know I meant that in the best possible way. Tiny little dolls, and all that."

John half-smiled. Both twins were now putting on weight to the satisfaction of their doctor, but they were still wearing actual doll's clothes for the time being.

"Molly, on the other hand, is looking terrible," was Harry's next tactful remark.

"Of course she's looking terrible," John said, feeling instantly that this was some sort of criticism toward himself. "She had a placental abruption, lost two and a half pints of blood, then had a complete hysterectomy and three blood transfusions. A week ago."

Harry took a sip of her Coke. "Yeah," she said. "That'd do it. Still, she'll be fine after a while, right?"

John quietly conceded the point.

"So, dear brother, this would be the perfect time to please tell your stupid sister what's going on."

He frowned at her. "What's going on, as in what?"

"All right, so she had possibly the worst childbirth you can have—where everyone makes it out alive, anyway. And speaking as someone who actually _has_ a uterus, I promise you no woman wants theirs to turn on them so it has to be taken out like it's a fucking suicide bomber. But she's going to be fine, and so are the girls. So why are you looking like… that?"

John picked up a teaspooon and busied himself skimming froth off his coffee. "It's just something she said…"

"Your vagueness isn't helping. Just something who said? What did she say?"

"Molly." John cleared his throat. "There wasn't time to make a decision, Harry, I did the best I could—"

"For God's sake, will you spit it out?"

He coughed into his hand again. "When she came out of surgery," he said. "They… I had to tell her about the hysterectomy."

"And I'm thinking she didn't take it well," Harry said.

John was now apparently engrossed in shredding the edges of his napkin. "No," he said, clearing his throat again twice. "She started crying and said, 'But I wanted to have a boy'."

Harry paused, incredulous for a moment. "Oh, _John,"_ she groaned. "So you feel guilty for making a medical decision that saved the mother of your children, because she got upset when she'd just got life-changing news and was as high as fuck from a general anaesthetic? You fucking _idiot_."

"She wanted a boy. I— "

"Took that away from her? No, you didn't." Harry checked over her shoulder, then dropped her voice a little. Finding and using her Indoor Voice was not her forte. "Here," she said. "I'm going to tell you something, and if you ever repeat it or use it against me, I swear to God, y _our life won't be worth living._ You know what I happened to be doing on our fortieth birthday?"

John gave a bitter little laugh. "My guess is, you were drinking?"

He immediately reproached himself. If he was honest, he'd also spent his fortieth birthday drinking. That had been three months after Sherlock had committed suicide, or so he'd thought at the time.

"Of course I was fucking drinking," Harry said, unperturbed. "And when I was completely smashed, I called one of those anonymous crisis helplines and sobbed down the phone at them something like 'I'm forty and now I'll never have a baby.'"

John stared at her in honest surprise. "But you don't want kids," he said.

"Of course I don't. I was thirteen when I decided I didn't want kids. I hadn't even figured out I was gay yet, but I knew I didn't want kids. And that's never changed. I like to borrow other people's on the odd occasion, but I'd make a terrible mother, no matter how sober I am."

"So, but—"

"But that was always my decision, John. A choice _I_ got to make. And when I started getting to the stage where my body was making that decision for me, it was complete shit and there was nothing I could do to make it better except get used to it. So take it from me: Molly doesn't want a boy, and she certainly didn't want to bleed out and leave you with three motherless girls. She wanted to keep the ability to _have a boy if she felt like it._ You've both spent the past seven months angsting about your unexpected little extra, who we'll now call, oh, let's just say, _Louise_ …"

John flinched. Harry had made a promise months ago, when she'd heard that the expected twins had caused so much logistical concern. _When they're born, I'm going to ask you which one you don't want._ Now that little person had a name—Louise Beatrice Watson—and a personality: steel-jawed stubbornness, even at only eight days old and still under four pounds in weight.

"So let's face it," Harry was saying. "Even if everything had gone swimmingly, there would have been exactly zero chance of you trying for a boy anyway. You know it, I know it, Molly knows it, Sherlock knows it. There might be some guys in the Outer Hebrides who don't know it, but I doubt that. So now could you _please_ stop wandering around looking pale and tragic, and get your shit together for the sake of your family?"

* * *

_Charlie doesn't like pumpkin mash. - SH_

_Today 5:32pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_Asked her, did you?_

_Today 5:33pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_Deduction based on the fact that she threw a bowl of it on the floor. In light of this, I see no reason for her not to have the chocolate instead. - SH_

_Today 5:35pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_Do you want me to come over? Sherlock you can't give a kid chocolate for dinner_

_Today 5:39pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_And you can't use a comma correctly, it seems. - SH_

_Today 5:47pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_You're giving it to her aren't you?_

_Today 5:48pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_It has a number of important food groups necessary for her healthy development. Calcium, etc. -SH_

_Today 5:51pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

_I'm coming over_

_Today 5:52pm_

**_~o0o~_ **

Lestrade smiled to himself as he put his phone down. Even if Sherlock _was_ giving Charlie chocolate for dinner before he could turn up at the Watson's house to stop him, it wouldn't kill her to have it for one night. Being babysat had its compensations. John was, he assumed at the hospital again on his usual visit to Molly and the twins.

Eight days into the new year, and all was at peace in the Lestrade household. The honeymoon had been postponed until Mel's birthday in March, but neither of them regretted it too much: the weather was bitterly cold and, a week after falling ill, both of them were still feeling a little fragile anyhow. He'd rescheduled his annual leave, taken a week of sick leave instead, and was just then flailing under a mountain of paperwork about the Hayden case to be completed before showing up in the office bright and early at seven the next morning. Hopefully, things would be quiet at work for a while. In his absence, Donovan had solved a domestic murder in Bermondsey in six hours flat and one junkie had knifed another the night before, but those were what Sherlock Holmes would have called 'the boring ones.' Anyone could take care of those. No offence to Donovan, who hadn't complained once about the doubled workload.

He'd been upstairs fetching the power adaptor for his laptop, and was contemplating whether to go back to his paperwork or put the kettle on when the doorbell rang, bright and clear in the otherwise empty house.

"Hang on," he called down the stairs, hurrying down to the front hall and pulling the door open. He had no idea who he was expecting, but Hayley and Jake weren't it. Hand in hand. Solemn faces. Judging from Jake's clothes and weary expression, he'd only just clocked off from work.

"Oh, hi," he said in some confusion. "Come in. Mel's gone out, sorry…"

Jake and Hayley exchanged a look. "That's… that's good, actually," Hayley said. "I… we wanted to talk to you alone…"

He stopped, even more confused than ever. "Okay," he said slowly, cogs turning. "Um. I'll put the kettle on, then."

He left them sitting on the sofa, hand in hand, while he shuffled around the kitchen fiddling with cups and tea bags. When he finally put a hot cup in front of Hayley, shaking his scalded knuckles for a second, she made no attempt to reach out for it, though Jake took his. Suspecting he might need to be sitting down with a cup of caffeine himself for this one, Lestrade dropped into the chair opposite—noticing, for the first time, the modest little diamond ring on Hayley's left hand.

"Oh, bloody hell," he groaned. "Did you get engaged before or after I told you what a bad idea it was?"

Hayley and Jake looked at each other. "Before," Jake ventured. "But that's… not really what we came to tell you…"

But Greg was now focusing entirely on Hayley. The hands that held her cup of tea were shaking, and it didn't strike him as the nerves of a blushing bride-to-be. "Hayley," he said. "You're not…?"

"No." She put her hand to her mouth. "Not anymore."

"Oh, Christ…"

"We were going to tell you after the wedding," she continued shakily. "The sixth of December, we found out. It was an accident… I don't even know how it happened. Something didn't work. And we thought, after everything, getting married might be making the best of things even if we didn't plan it. And then on Christmas night, I had a bleed and Jake had to take me to hospital, and…"

"Hey." Not knowing what else to do, Lestrade leaned across the coffee table and squeeze her free hand. "Hey. Shhh."

"Please don't tell Mum…"

This gave him pause, and he squeezed Hayley's hand again and mused over it in silence. He couldn't feel angry about not being told, and then proceed to not tell Julie... could he?

Yeah. He could. Hayley and Julie had never been close, and this wasn't his secret to tell.

The truth was that Greg Lestrade was quickly all out of ideas on how to comfort his firstborn. His next urge was to ask her if she wanted a cup of tea; she already had one. His second urge was to give her a hug, but sitting opposite her with a coffee table in between them, this was going to be difficult to orchestrate. And anyway, Jake was there. Never had the professional/personal conflict of interest felt so immeasurable.

"I won't say anything," he finally said, making an effort to leave off _but you really should. "_ Calm down, Hayley; deep breaths. Go give your face a good wash, okay?"

She rose in immediate compliance, which was strange; as she went up the stairs, Lestrade realised she probably wanted to take advantage of the privacy of the bathroom to cry some more, and reproached himself for practically putting her there. He and Jake heard the bathroom door upstairs close gently behind her. Jake looked like he didn't know whether to follow Hayley upstairs or make a break for the front door.

"Jake," Lestrade said, taking a desperate little gulp of his tea while he thought out how to approach this one. "I'm going to explain something to you, and more than anything in the world, I hope you get to know this for yourself one day. You might be the number one man in Hayley's life right now, but I'm her _father_ , and that's never going to change. And when one of my kids is in pain, I need to know about it. No matter how bad it is. If you couldn't tell me when she found out she was pregnant, for God's sake, you should have called me when she _miscarried."_

After a pause, Jake said, "I wanted to. I just about pleaded with her on my hands and knees. But with Hayley sobbing in a hospital bed at two a.m. on Boxing Day morning, begging me not to tell you and Julie… what else could I do?" He glanced away toward the kitchen. "I feel like shit, actually," he confessed.

"Because," Lestrade said with sudden insight, "neither of you actually wanted a baby right now in the first place?"

"I didn't want her to have a miscarriage."

"No. Neither did she. I'm not a moron, Jake. I get it." Lestrade sipped his tea again, without registering the taste. "But you're… still engaged, yeah?"

"'Course," Jake said. "I wouldn't have asked her to marry me if I didn't really want to. Just… there's… no rush anymore. We might give it a couple of years after all."

Lestrade half-smiled. "You know why I didn't hit the roof when you two started dating?"

"I've actually wondered about that a bit, sir."

"I've got a first name, Jake, and it's not 'sir.' And wonder no longer. I thought you were too old for Hayley, and in a lot of ways you are, mate—wanting to settle down when she's barely out of her gap year. I know that makes me sound like I'm a hypocrite, but it's a bit different for me and Mel. She's at least got her degree, good job, settled down."

Jake raised one eyebrow.

"Settled down a bit," he corrected himself. "But anyway. I let it go because I think you two can make this work. You care about each other. You work your way around problems. She's never followed you around like a puppy."

"If I wanted a puppy I'd get one, s- Greg."

"Exactly. What I'm getting at is, don't let this break Hayley. Don't let it break you. You can have a whole bunch of kids when you're older. No hurry." He paused again. "Are you all right?" he asked. "I mean, do you need time off work, or a couple of days at the desk, or…?"

Jake shook his head. "I'm fine," he said. "And I don't want anyone asking questions as to why I'm off work or on paperwork."

"Makes sense." Lestrade went to take another sip of his tea and realised the cup was empty. "Maybe go up to her," he muttered. "I think this might be your finest hour, not mine. Also, congratulations on your engagement."

* * *

Sherlock woke, confused; several things hit him all at once. The first was that he was lying on the sofa in the living room at 221a, a flat he knew he could no longer refer to as 'Mrs Hudson's flat' and couldn't bring himself to call 'John and Molly's flat' yet. The second was that Charlie, rugged up in a black-and-white flannel jumpsuit with cow's ears on the hood, was lying fast asleep against his chest. It was dark outside, but the overhead light was on and John was standing in the doorway, looking highly amused, his phone in one hand.

"How long have you been there?" Sherlock demanded, trying to sit up without waking Charlie.

"Long enough to take photos." John put his phone back into his jeans pocket. "And send them off to Greg. I heard he could do with a few new ones to put up in his office. How did she go?"

"Fine," Sherlock said, passing her off to John without waking her.

"Did she eat?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"I'm going to put her to bed, then," John said. "Put the kettle on."

Sherlock went into the kitchen and filled the kettle as promised. Down the hall, he could hear John playing with Charlie, so he took the opportunity to duck up to 221b, bringing down some papers half a minute later. He put them on the table while he fussed with cups and tea bags, having both cups on the table just in time for John to re-emerge.

"How is… everyone…?" Sherlock ventured.

"Fine." John rubbed his eyes. "Louise's lungs are improving, but they're still not great, and both of them still on respirators. I've got a feeling Sophie will be the easiest of our lot. Molly's doing the best they can expect."

"That doesn't sound like she's fine."

"She gets very tired, and she's in a lot of pain still. That'll take a long time to recover from. If her doctor tries to send her home any sooner than another week, I'm calling Mycroft." John took the cup of tea from Sherlock, but waited for him to sit down before sipping from it. He indicated the papers. "What's that?" he asked.

"Medical reports," Sherlock said.

"Whose?"

"Mine." Sherlock gave them to him, and he read them over in silence for a minute or two. Finally he put them down again.

"You promised," he said. "You promised me. Never while Charlie was living here. _Never_."

"And I've let you down," Sherlock said. "I have no excuses, and I will give you none. All I can do is provide the proof that I'm undergoing bi-weekly drugs counselling and daily urine tests, all of which will confirm I haven't taken so much as a paracetamol tablet since the twins were born." He winced. "Cocaine withdrawals can give you a horrible headache."

"A week," John muttered, clenching his right hand. "Jesus, Sherlock. For a week, you let me leave my child with someone who was-"

"Perfectly capable of looking after her," Sherlock finished for him. "The tests show it."

John scrubbed both hands over his tired face. "But that's not all, is it," he said. "There's something else you want to tell me. I know that look."

"I sometimes get high during slow periods," Sherlock said, looking down at his cup. "But the last time I used cocaine was in the middle of a case. After Elizabeth Hayden was found dead. After Molly became ill."

_"… Sherlock."_

"I don't even know why I did it, John, I..."

"I do," John said. "Because you're addicted, that's why."

"Cocaine has a very low-"

"I didn't really mean you were _physically_ addicted. A drinker becomes an alcoholic when they think drinking makes them happier and smarter." John folded the papers. "This is good," he said, handing them back. "This is you starting to take responsibility. If you'd left me to find out any other way, I'd be getting the keys to a motel right now. How long has Greg known?"

"Sorry?"

"You didn't volunteer _yourself_ for daily drugs testing. I'm assuming he's the one who fixed this up for you. If it was Mycroft, I'd have heard about it by now. What, you think I don't know where you were every time you took a little case that required you to be out of the country for two weeks without me? I'm not an idiot, Sherlock. My sister was an alcoholic for twenty years."

Sherlock let out a breath. "Lestrade would never…"

"He would never put Charlie in danger. I know. Which is why I haven't punched you in the mouth yet."

"Yet?"

"You need to stick with this, Sherlock. For at least a few months more. It's not enough to just be clean now, and you know it. Whatever's making you think you need cocaine to function, you need to sort it out. And if that means telling a woman you don't know all about your deepest fears and anxieties, well, that's just what you're going to have to do."

"Man," Sherlock said.

"Sorry?"

"My drugs counsellor is a man. Michael. Half Welsh. Rides horses. Has trouble communicating emotionally with his wife…"

"I'm guessing he didn't tell you all that," John said. "Just who is analysing who there?"

"Whom."

"Not in the mood for smart-arsery right now, Sherlock, so don't even try it." John cleared his throat into his hand and swallowed. "I need you to be clean, Sherlock. I need your help. I can't do this on my own."

"John, you've always been a living master of the guilt trip, but that is the most spectacular—"

"There's nobody else. Greg's great, but he and Mel work full time. So do Mike and Chrissy and Bill and Laura. And Harry is…" he stopped, struggling. "Well. She's…"

"Harry?" Sherlock suggested.

"That. She's been great, but between us we're hopeless and always have been." John gave his attention to his cup of tea for half a minute in pensive silence. "I mean it, though," he finally muttered into his collar. "I need your help, Sherlock. I'm not even sure how yet, but I've got Molly and the twins in hospital for the foreseeable future and Charlie here on my own. And if I'm honest, that scares the shit out of me."

A chastened silence fell over Sherlock. He'd never heard John ask for help before. Not when he was hurting or bleeding; not when he thought he was dying…

Yes, he had asked for help once. Barely a week before. _Sherlock, Jesus, help me..._

"Do you still want me to look after Charlie for you…?" he ventured.

John gave this some serious thought. "I don't know," he finally said, running one finger over the rim of his coffee cup. "I don't know enough people that I'm spoiled for choice. But you lied to me, Sherlock. You didn't just fail, you _lied_. Doing your best isn't going to be enough when something happens to Charlie on your watch and you're off your head and can't deal with it."

"Agreed," Sherlock said. "But there's something else you can ask for, other than my promise. The results of my drug tests. And notes from my therapist."

John shook his head. "Test results, absolutely. If you're going to be looking after Charlie, I need to know for a fact that you're clean. I can't always tell. But I don't want notes from your therapist. Those are confidential."

"I can give permission to disclose them to an interested third party," Sherlock said.

"Or," John said, "maybe you could come and _talk to me,_ sometimes, instead of handing me a bunch of therapist's notes every so often. I've got a toddler on deck who doesn't sleep. Chances are, when you're holding onto the wagon at 3am, I'm going to be awake anyway."

"I couldn't burden you further…"

"You're not a _burden_ , Sherlock; you're my friend. Let's keep it that way, all right? Now shut the hell up and drink your tea."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The next, and probably last, fic in this series is 'Letters from Hell'. It's available from my profile. Please note that this fic is rated M.


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